
--""- --^--'^ - ...^■..^;^;i;^.^^^:&.^..'^...^V^^?^^^ ■ 




Class Q n Ls 

Book li 

By bequest of 

William Lukens Shoemaker 



DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 



BY 



REV. T. P. THISELTON-DYER, M.A., Oxon., 

Author of ^^ British Popular Customs,^ ^ and ^* English 
Folk-lore,'* 



Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co. 

LONDON, FARIS ^ KEJF YORK, 



[all rights reserved.] 






-V tj, S'TOomaker 
7 S '06 



y 



PEEF ACE 



For the name <^ Folk-lore '^ in its present significa- 
tion, embracing the Popular Traditions, Proverbial 
Sayings, Superstitions, and Customs of the people, we 
are in a great measure indebted to the late editor of 
N-otes and QiLeries—lslY. W, J. Thoms— who, in an 
anonymous contribution to the Athenceuin of 22nd 
August, 1846, very aptly suggested this comprehensive 
term, which has since been adopted as the recognised 
title of what has now become an important branch of 
antiquarian research. 

The study of Folk-lore is year by year receiv- 
ing greater attention, its object being to collect, 
classify, and preserve survivals of popular belief, 
and to trace them as far as possible to their 
original source. This task is no easy one, as school- 
boards and railways are fast sweeping away every 
vestige of the old beliefs and customs which, in days 
gone by, held such a prominent place in social and 
domestic life. The Folk-lorist has, also, to deal with 
remote periods, and to examine the history of tales 



IV PREFACE. 

and traditions which have been handed down from 
the distant past and have lost much of their mean- 
ing in the lapse of years. But, as a writer in the 
Standard has pointed out, Folk-lore students tread 
on no man's toes. " They take up points of history 
which the histoi^ian despises, and deal with monuments 
more intangible but infinitely more ancient than those 
about which Sir John Lubbock is so solicitous. They 
prosper and are happy on the crumbs dropped from 
the tables of the learned, and grow scientifically rich 
on the refuse which less skilful craftsmen toss aside as 
useless. The tales with which the nurse wiles her 
charge asleep provide for the Folk-lore student a 
succulent banquet — for he knows that there is scarcely 
a child's story or a vain thought that may not be 
traced back to the boyhood of the world, and to those 
primitive races from which so many polished nations 
have sprung." 

The field of research, too, in which the Folk-lorist 
is engaged is a most extensive one, supplying materials 
for investigation of a wide-spread character. Thus 
he recognises and, as far as he possibly can, explains 
the smallest item of superstition wherever found, not 
limiting his inquiries to any one subject. This, there- 
fore, whilst enhancing the value of Folk-lore as a study, 
in the same degree increases its interest, since with a 
perfect impartiality it lays bare superstition as it exists 



PREFACE. V 

among all classes of society. Whilst condemning, it 
may be, the uneducated peasant who places credence 
in the village fortune-teller or " cunning man," we 
are apt to forget how oftentimes persons belonging to 
the higher classes are found consulting with equal 
faith some clairvoyant or spirit-medium. 

Hence, however reluctant the intelligent part of 
the community may be to own the fact, it must bo 
admitted that superstition, in one form or another, 
dwells beneath the surface of most human hearts, 
although it may frequently display itself in the most 
disguised or refined form. Among the lower orders, 
as a wi'iter has observed, " it wears its old fashions, 
in the higher it changes with the rapidity of modes in 
fashionable circles." Indeed, it is no matter of sur- 
prise that superstition prevails among the poor and 
ignorant, when we find the affluent and enlightened 
in many cases quite as ready to repose their belief 
in the most illogical ideas. 

In conclusion, we would only add that the present 
little volume has been written with a view of showing 
how this rule applies even to the daily routine of 
Domestic Life, every department of which, as will bo 
seen in the following pages, has its own Folk-lore. 

T. F. Thiselton Dyer. 

Brighton, M'Vj, 1881. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

BIRTH AND INFANCY. ^ PAQE 

Value of Superstitions — Lucky Days and Hours of Birth — The 
Caul— The Changeling — The Evil Eye — "Up and not 
Down" — Rocking the Empty Cradle— Teeth, Nails, and 
Hands — The Maple and the Ash — Unchristened Children 1 

CHAPTER II. 

CHILDHOOD. 

Nursery Literature — The Power of Baptism — Confirmation — 
PojDular Prayers — Weather Rhymes — School Superstitions 
— Barring out 16 

CHAPTER III. 

LOVE AND COURTSHIP. 

Love-tests — Plants used in Love-charms— The Lady-bird — The 
Snail— St. Valentine's Day — ISIidsummer Eve — Hallowe'en 
— Omens on Friday 23 

CHAPTER IV, 

MARRIAGE. 

Seasons and Days i^ropitious to Marriage — Superstitions con- 
nected with the Bride — Meeting a Funeral— Robbing the 
Bride of Pins — Dancing in a Hog's Trough — The Wed- 
ding-cake — The Ring 36 

CHAPTER V. 

DEATH AND BURIAL. 

Warnings of Death— The Howling of Dogs— A Cow in the 
Garden — Death-presaging Birds— Plants — The Will-o'-the- 
Wisp — The Sympathy between Two Personalities —Pro- 
phecy — Dying Hardly — The Last Act — Place and Position 
of the Grave 48 



CONTENTS. Vii 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE HUMAN BODY. PAGE 

Superstitions about Deformity, Moles, &c.— Tingling of trie 
Ear— The Nose— The Eye— The Teeth— The Haii'— The 
Hand— Dead Man's Hand— The Feet .... 65 

CHAPTER VII. 

ARTICLES OF DRESS. 

New Clothes at Easter and AVhitsuntide — ^Wearing of Clothes 
— The Clothes of the Dead — The Apron, Stockings, 
Garters, &c.— The Shoe— The Glove— The Pving— Pins . 81 

CHAPTER VIII. 

TABLE SUPERSTITIONS. 

Thirteen at Table — Salt-spilling — The Knife — Bread, and other 
Articles of Food — Wishing Bones — Tea-leaves — Singing 
before Breakfast— Shaking Hands across the Table . .100 

CHAPTER IX. 

FURNITURE OMENS. 

Folk-lore of the Looking-glass — Luck of Edenhall — Clock- 
falling— Chairs— Beds— The Bellows . . , .111 

CHAPTER X. 

HOUSEHOLD SUPERSTITIONS. 

Prevalence and Continuity of Superstitions — Sneezing — 
Stumbling — A "WTiistling Woman — Sweeping — Breaking 
Crockery — Fires and Candles — Money — Other Super- 
stitions 120 

CHAPTER XL 

POPULAR DIVINATIONS. 

Bible and Key — Dipping — Sieve and Shears — Crowing of the 
Cock — Spatulamancia — Palmistry and Onymancy — Look- 
divination — Astrology — Cards — Casting Lot — Tea-stalks . 134 



Vm CONTEXTS. 

CHAPTER XII. 

COMMON AILMENTS. TAQB 

Charm-remedies— For Ague — Bleeding of the Nose — Bums — 
Cramp — Ex^ilepsy — Fits — Gout — Headache, &c, . , 148 

CHAPTER XIII. 

MISCELLANEOUS HOUSEHOLD LORE. , 

Ilorse-shoes — Precautions against AYitclicraf t - The Charmer — 
Second Sight— Ghosts— Dreams—Nightmare , , , 169 



DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE, 



CHAPTER I. 

BIRTH AND INFANCV. 

Value of Superstitions —Lucky Days and Hours of Birth— The Caul 
—The Changeling— The Evil Eye— *'Up and not Down"— 
Rocking the Empty Cradle — Teeth, Nails, and Hands — 
The Maple and the Ash — Unchristened Children. 

Around every stage of human life a variety of customs 
and superstitions have woven themselves, most of 
which, apart from their antiquarian value, as having 
been bequeathed to us from the far-off past, are in- 
teresting in so far as they illustrate those old-world 
notions and quaint beliefs which marked the social 
and domestic life of our forefathers. Although, there- 
fore, many of these may appear to us meaningless, yet 
it must be remembered that they were the natural 
outcome of that scanty knowledge and those crude 
conceptions which prevailed in less enlightened times 
than our own. Probably, if our ancestors were in 
our midst now, they would be able in a great measure 
to explain and account for what is often looked upon 
now-a-days as childish fancy and so much nursery 
rubbish. In the present chapter it is proposed to 
give a brief and general survey of the folk-lore 

B 



2 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

associated with birth and infancy, without, however, 
entering critically into its origin or growth, or tracing- 
its transmigration from one country to another. 
Commencing, then, with birth, we find that many 
influences are supposed to affect the future fortune 
and character of the infant. Thus, in some places 
great attention is paid to the day of the week on 
which the child is born, as may be gathered from the 
following rhyme still current in Cornwall : — 

" Sunday's child is full of grace, 
Monday's child is full in the face, 
Tuesday's child is solemn and sad, 
Wednesday's child is merry and glad, 
Thursday's child is inclined to thieving, 
Friday's child is free in giving, 
Saturday's child works hard for his living " — 

a piece of folk-lore varying, of course, in different 
localities. By general consent, however, Sunday is 
regarded as a most lucky day for birth, both in this 
country and on the Continent ; and according to the 
'^Universal Fortune-teller" — a book very popular 
among the lower classes in former years — "great 
riches, long life, and happiness " are in store for those 
fortunate beings born on Sunday, while in Sussex 
they are considered safe against drowning and hang- 
ing. Importance is also attached to the hour of 
birth ; and the faculty of seeing much that is hidden 
from others is said to be granted to children born at 
the '^ chime hours," i.e.^ the hours of three, six, nine, 
or twelve — a superstition found in many parts of the 
Continent. There is, too, an idea prevalent in Germany 



BIRTH AND INFANCY. 3 

that when a child is born in leap-yeax' either it or its 
mother will die within the course of the year — a 
notion not unknown in our own country. Again, 
from time immemorial various kinds of divination 
have been in use for the purpose of discovering the 
sex of an infant previous to its birth. One of these 
is by means of a shoulder-of -mutton bone, which, after 
the whole of the flesh has been stripped clean off, 
must be hung up the last thing at night over the front 
door of the house. On the following morning the sex 
of the first person who enters, exclusive of the members 
of the household, indicates the sex of the child. 

We will next turn to some of the countless 
superstitions connected with the new-born child. A 
highly popular one refers to the caul — a thin mem- 
brane occasionally found covering the head at birth, 
and deemed specially lucky, as indicating, among other 
things, that the child \vill never be drowned. It has 
been, in consequence, termed the "holy" or "fortu- 
nate hood," and great care is generally taken that it 
should not be lost or thrown away, for fear of the 
death or sickness of the child. This superstitious 
fancy was very common in the primitive ages of the 
Church, and St. Chrysostom inveighs against it in 
several of his homilies. The presence of a caul on 
board ship was believed to prevent shipwreck, and 
owners of vessels paid a large price for them. Most 
readers will, no doubt, recollect how Thomas Hood 
wrote for his early work, "Whims and Oddities," a 
capital ballad upon this vulgar error. Speaking of 
the jolly mariner who confidently put to sea in spite 



4 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

of the ink-black sky which *^ told every eye a storm 
was soon to be," he goes on to say — 

" But still that jolly mariner 
Took in no reef at all ; 
For in his pouch confidingly > 

He wore a baby's caul." 

It little availed him, however; for as soon as the 
storm in ruthless fury burst upon his frail bark, he 

*' Was smothered by the squall. 
Heaven ne'er heard his cry, nor did 
The ocean heed his caul !'* 

Advocates also purchased them, that they miglit be 
endued with eloquence, the price paid having often 
been from twenty to thirty guineas. They seem to 
have had other magical properties, as Grose informs us 
that any one " possessed of a caul may know the state 
of health of the person who was born with it. If 
alive and well, it is firm and crisp ; if dead or sick, 
relaxed and flaccid." In France the luck supposed 
to belong to a caul is proverbial, and Hre ne coiffe 
is an expression signifying that a person is extremely 
fortunate. Apart from the ordinary luck supposed to 
attach to the "caul," it may preserve the child from a 
terrible danger to which, according to the old idea, it is 
ever exposed — namely, that of being secretly carried off 
and exchanged by some envious witch or fairy for its 
own ill-favoured offspring. This superstition was once 
very common in many countries, and was even believed 
by Martin Luther, if we are to rely on the following 
extract from his " Table Book :" — " Changelings 
Satan lays in the place of the genuine children, that 



BIRTH AND INFANCY. 5 

people may be tormented with them. He often 
carries off young maidenS into the water." This most 
reprehensible of the practices attributed to the fairies 
is constantly spoken of by our old writers, and is 
several times mentioned by Shakespeare. In the 
speech of Puck, in A Midsummer Night's Dream 
(Act ii., sc. 1), that jovial sprite says of Titania's lovely 
boy — the cause of quarrel between the King and 
Queen of Elfland : — 

" She never had so sweet a changeling." 

In the Winter's Tale (Act iv., sc. 4) the Shepherd, 
on discovering the babe Perdita, tells the Clown, 
'* It was told me I should be rich by the fairies. 
This is some changeling." As a preservation against 
this danger, sundry charms are observed. Thus, in 
the North of England, a carving-knife is still hung 
from the head of the cradle, with the point suspended 
near the child's face. In the Western Isles of Scotland 
idiots are believed to be the fairies' changelings, and in 
order to regain the lost child, parents have recourse to 
the following device : — They place the changeling on 
the beach, below high-water mark, when the tide is 
out, and pay no heed to its screams, believing that the 
fairies, rather than allow their offspring to be drowned 
by the rising waters, will convey it away and restore 
the child they had stolen. The sign that this has 
been done is the cessation of the child's crying. In 
Ireland, too, the peasants often place the child sup- 
posed to be a changeling on a hot shovel, or torment 
it in some other way. A similar practice is resorted 



6 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

to in Denmark, where the mother heats the oven, and 
places the child on the peel, pretending to put it in ; 
and sometimes she whips it severely with a rod, or 
throws it into the water. The only real safeguard, 
however, against this piece of fairy mischief is baj^tism, 
and hence the rite has generally been performed 
among the peasantry as soon as possible after birth. 

Another danger to y>^hich the new-born child is 
said to be exposed, and to counteract which baptism 
is an infallible charm, is the influence of the ^^evil 
eye f certain persons being thought to possess the 
power of inflicting injury by merely looking on those 
whom they wish to harm. Although this form of 
superstition has been gradually dying out for many 
years past, yet it still retains its hold in certain 
country places. It is interesting to trace this notion 
as far back as the time of the Romans j and in the 
late Professor Conington's translation of the ^' Satires 
of Persius " we find it thus laughably spoken of : — 
'* Look here ! A grandmother or a superstitious aunt 
has taken baby from his cradle, and is charming his 
forehead against mischief by the joint action of her 
middle finger and her purifying spittle ; for she knows 
right well how to check the evil eye." Confining our- 
selves, however, to instances recorded in our own 
country, we find that, even now-a-days, various charms 
are practised for counteracting the baneful influence of 
this cruel species of Avitchcraft. Thus, in Lancashire, 
some of the chief consist in spitting three times in the 
child's face, turning a live coal in the fire, exclaiming, 
"TJie Lord be with us;" whilst in the neighbourhood 



BIRTH AND INFANCY. 7 

of Burnley *' drawing blood above the mouth " was 
once a popular antidote. Self-bored or ^* lucky 
stones " are often hung by the peasantry behind their 
cottage doors ; and in the South of England a copy of 
the apocryphal letter of our Lord to Abgarus, King of 
Edessa, may occasionally be seen pasted on the walls. 
In many places, when a child pines or wastes away, 
the cause is often attributed to the " evil eye," and one 
remedy in use against this disaster is the following : — 
Before sunrise it is brought to a blacksmith of the 
seventh generation, and laid on tlie anvil. The smith 
then raises his hammer as if he were about to strike 
the hot iron, but brings it gently down on the child's 
body. This is done three times, after which the child 
is considered certain to amend. This superstition 
survives in Cornwall ; and the late Mr. Hawker, of 
Morwenstow, a noted authority on such topics, tells us 
that two-thirds of the inhabitants of the Tamar side 
firmly believe in the power of the evil eye. In 
Scotland this piece of folk-lore has prevailed exten- 
sively from time immemorial, and one of the charms 
to avert it is the "gold and silver water." A sovereign 
and a shilling are put into water, which is sprinkled 
over the patient in the name of the Trinity. Again, 
in the Highlands of Scotland, ash-sap is given to new- 
born children, because, in common with the rowan, 
that tree is supposed to possess tlie property of resist- 
ing the attacks of witches, fairies, and other imps of 
darkness. The Irish think that not only their children 
but their cattle are "eye-bitten" when they fall 
suddenly sick. 



O DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

Among other important items of folk-lore asso- 
ciated with birth may be mentioned the popular belief 
that a child should go up in the world before it goes 
doAvn On leaving its mother's room for the first 
time, it is considered absolutely necessary that it 
should be carried iq^f-stairs before it goes down-stairs, 
otherwise it will always keep low in the world, and 
never rise in after-life either to riches or distinction. 
When, however, as often happens, the mother's room 
is on the top storey, the nurse overcomes the obstacle 
by placing a chair near the door, on which she steps 
before leaving the room. In Yorkshire it is further 
stated that a new-born infant should always be placed 
first in the arms of a maiden before any one else 
touches it. It has been aptly questioned by Mr. Hen- 
derson, in his *' Folk-lore of the Northern Counties," 
whether we may not trace in this practice an out- 
growth of the mediaeval belief that the Yirgin Mary 
was present at the birth of St. John the Baptist, 
and received him first in her arm.s. Some, too, will 
never permit an infant to sleep upon bones — that 
is, the lap — a piece of folk-lore founded on some 
degree of truth ; for it has been pointed out that it is 
undoubtedly better for a child to support it through- 
out its whole length, than to allow its head or 
legs to hang down, as they might probably do if the 
infant was sleeping on the lap. Again, there is a 
common idea that a baby and a kitten cannot thrive 
in the same house ; and should, therefore, as is not 
unfrequently the case, a cat have kittens at the 
time of a birth, these are immediately either de- 



BIRTH AND INFANCY. 9 

stroyed or given away. Few nurses, also, can be 
found courageous enough to weigh a young child, 
from a superstitious conviction that it is unfortu- 
nate so to do, the child often dying, or, at any rate, 
not thriving afterwards. Equally unlucky, too, is 
it considered to rock baby's empty cradle, it being 
an omen of its death — a belief which also prevails in 
Scotland. The same notion exists in many parts of 
the Continent, and the Swedish folk tell us that it 
should be avoided, as it is apt to make the child noisy 
and given to crying. It is also deprecated on another 
ground, that it is ominous of another claimant for that 
place of rest — a piece of folk-lore which the Sussex 
peasantry express in the following rhyme : — 

*' If you rock the cradle empty, 
Then you shall have babies plenty." 

Many consider it a bad sign when the first tooth 
makes its appearance in the upper jaw, denoting, it 
is said, that the child will not survive its infancy. 
Whilst speaking of teeth, it may be noted that they 
occupy an important place in the folk-lore of infancy. 
Many readers will no doubt recollect how the Duke 
of Gloucester, in 3 Henry VI. (Act v., sc. 6), when 
describing the peculiarities connected with his birth, 
relates that — 

" The midwife wondered, and the women cried, 
* Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!' 
And so I was, which plainly signified 
That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog." 

In Sussex it is still customary for little children to 
wear a necklace of beads made from the root of the 



10 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

peony, ds this is supposed to act as a charm in assisting 
the cutting of their teeth. In the same county, too, 
the peasantry have a great dislike to throwing away 
the cast teeth of young children, believing that should 
any be accidentally found and gnawed by an animal, 
the child's new tooth would exactly correspond with 
the animal's which had bitten the old one. Once 
more, in Scotland and the North of England, when 
the first teeth come out, sundry precautions are taken, 
to make sure that the fresh ones may be sound and 
healthy. One of these consists in filling the cavity 
with salt, after which the tooth must be burnt, while 
the following formula is repeated : — 
" Fire ! fire ! burn bone ; 
God send me my tooth again." 

This practice exists in Sweden, and likewise in Switzer- 
land, where the tooth is wrapped up in paper, with a 
little salt, and then thrown into the fire. The teeth, 
however, are not the only objects of superstition in 
infancy, similar importance being attached to the nails. 
In many places, for instance, it is considered impru- 
dent to cut them till baby is a year old, and then they 
should be bitten ofi", or else there is a likelihood of its 
growing up dishonest, or of its being, as the Sussex 
peasantry say, " light-fingered." Anyhow, special 
attention is to be paid to the day of the week on 
which the child's nails are cut, if there be any 
truth in a well-known proverb — 

*' Better a child had ne'er been bom, 
Than cut his nails on a Sunday morn." 

The same warning is given in G-ermany, and if it is 



BIRTH AKD INFANCY. 11 

disregarded, it is said that tlie child will be liable to 
stammer as it grows up. A curious Northumberland 
belief affirms that if the first parings of a child^s nails 
are carefully buried under an ash-tree, it will turn out 
in after-life a capital singer. It is also a popular 
fancy in nursery folk-lore that the child's future career 
in this world can be easily augured from the little 
specks on its nails, a species of palmistry still exten- 
sively credited by even educated persons, and one, too, 
not confined to infancy. Again, the infant's tiny 
hands are not free from superstition, and here and 
there, throughout the country, there is a notion that 
for the first few months after its birth the right one 
should remain unwashed, the reason assigned for this 
strange piece of eccentricity being that it may gather 
riches. According to another idea, children born 
open-handed are said to be of a bountiful disposition. 
In Scotland, too, great attention is paid as to which 
hand a child uses when taking up for the first time 
a spoon to eat. If it should happen to be the left, 
then, alas ! he is doomed to be an unlucky fellow 
all through his life. Indeed, as far as we can judge 
from the numerous items of folk-lore still in vogue, it 
would seem that the early period of infancy, in one 
way or another, furnishes countless opportunities for 
ascertaining what kind of life is in store for the child 
in years to come, almost every trivial action being 
regarded as indicative of something or other that shall 
befall it. Although many of these ideas may seem to 
us in this nineteenth century apparently senseless, yet 
it must be remembered they are frequently survivals 



12 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

of primitive culture, and are interesting as having 
been handed down to us from the distant past. 
According to an old superstition, parents desirous of 
securing long life for their children should pass them 
through the branches of a maple. A few years ago 
one of these trees had long been resorted to for this 
purpose in West Grinstead Park, and as soon as a 
rumour spread through the parish that it was about to 
be demolished, quite a consternation prevailed in the 
neighbourhood. Similar properties are supposed to 
belong to the ash, weakly infants that do not thrive 
being drawn through a cleft in its trunk. This charm, 
as performed in Cornwall, is thus : — A large knife is 
inserted into the trunk of a young ash, about a foot 
from the ground, and a vertical opening made for 
about three feet. Two men then forcibly pidl the 
parts asunder, and hold them so, whilst the mother 
j)asses the child through the cleft three times. The 
ceremony does not end here, as the child has to be 
washed for three successive mornings in the dew from 
the leaves of the "charmed ash." This supposed 
magical property of the ash has an additional interest, 
when we consider that some thousands of years ago 
our ancestors regarded it as one of their wonder- 
working trees, and associated it with some of their 
oldest traditions. At the present day, too, it is the 
subject of an extensive folk-lore, to which we shall 
have occasion to refer in a succeeding chapter. 

Again, if a baby frets and does not appear to 
thrive, it is supposed by some to be ** longing." Thus, 
a Sussex nurse one day said to a lady, " Baby is so 



BIRTH AND INFANCY. 13 

uncommon fretty, I do believe he must be longing for 
something." When asked what he could be longing 
for, she replied, ^^ Something that his mother longed 
for, but did not get, before he was born, and the best 
way to satisfy him would be, I think, to try him with 
a brandied cherry, or some hare's brains." This piece 
of superstition, however, is not confined to Sussex. 
Once more, in addition to the popular notion that cats 
suck the breath of infants and so cause their death — 
one, indeed, without a particle of truth — there is 
another in which poor pussy is the victim, an illustra- 
tion of which we quote from " Rambles in an Old 
City," by a Norfolk author : — ** Not long since a 
woman, holding quite a respectable rank among the 
working classes, avowed herself determined to ^drownd' 
the cat as soon as ever her baby, which was lying ill, 
should die. The only explanation she could give for 
this determination was that the cat jumped upon the 
nurse's lap as the baby lay there soon after it was 
born, from which time it ailed, and ever since that 
time the cat had regularly gone under its bed once a 
day and coughed twice. These mysterious actions of 
poor ^ Tabby ' were assigned as the cause of the baby 
wasting, and its fate was to be sealed as soon as that 
of the poor infant was decided. That the baby 
happened to be the twenty-fourth child of his mother, 
who had succeeded in rearing only four of the two 
dozen, was a fact that seemed to possess no weight 
whatever in her estimation." This strange antipathy 
to our domestic animal no doubt took its origin in the 
old belief that the cat's is one of the numerous forms 



14 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

which witches are fond of assuming, and on this 
account^ in days gone by, poor pussy was oftentimes 
subjected to gross ill-treatment at the hands of the 
ignorant classes. At the present day, in Germany, 
there is a deep-rooted belief that witches, when bent 
on doing mischief, take the form of a cat, and many 
stories are current of their frightening their victims 
by appearing as " the nightmare ;" or, if dishonestly 
disposed, of their drinking their neighbour's beer. 
Returning, however, again to the subject of our 
present chapter, there is a superstitious fancy in the 
North of England that it is unlucky to walk over the 
graves of unchristened children, which is vulgarly 
called " unchristened ground," the person who does so 
rendering himself liable to catching the fatal disease 
of the "grave-scab." This complaint, we are told by 
Mr. Henderson, *' comes on with a trembling of the 
limbs and hard breathing, and at last the skin burns 
as if touched with hot iron," in allusion to which 
an old ballad tells us — 

''And it ne'er will be cured by doctor on earth, 
Tho' every one should tent him, oh ! 
He shall tremble and die like the elf-shot eye, 
And return from whence he came, oh ! " 

There is, however, a remedy, though not easy of 
attainment — " It lies in the wearing a sark, thus 
prepared : — The lint must be grown in a field which 
shall be manured from a farmyard heap that has not 
been disturbed for forty years. It must be spun by 
Habbitrot, the queen of spinsters; it must be bleached 
by an honest bleacher^ in an honest nailler's mDl-dam, 



BIRTH AND INFANCY. 15 

and sewed by an honest tailor. On donning this 
mysterious vestment, the sufferer will at once regain 
his health and strength." Unfortunately the necessary 
conditions for the successful accomplishment of this 
charm are so difficult, that he must be a clever man 
who can fulfil them. In the South of England, on 
the other hand, we do not find the same dread 
attaching to the graves of still-born children. Thus 
on a certain occasion, when one of the Commissioners 
of Devonport complained that a charge of one shilling 
and sixpence should have been made upon the parish 
authorities for the grave and interment of a still-born 
child, he added that " when he was a young man it 
was thought lucky to have a still-born child put into 
an open grave, as it was considered to be a sure pass- 
port to heaven for the next person buried there." 
According to another superstitious notion, if a mother 
frets and pines after her baby when it is dead, it is 
said that it cannot rest, and will come back to earth 
again. Various stories are on record of children thus 
visiting their mothers after death, an instance of 
which we quote from the " Dialect of Leeds :" — It 
appears that soon after the birth of the mother's 
next child, the previous one that had died entered 
her room with eyes deeply sunken, as if with much 
weeping, and on approaching the bed, said, ^'Mother, 
I can't rest if you will go on fretting." She replied, 
"Well, lad, I wean't fret any more." He then 
looked upon the bed and said, '* Let's luke at it, 
mother ! " She turned down the coverlet and let 
him look a.t her new-born babe. " It '11 die/' he said,' 



16 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

and vanished. These, then, are some of the boundless 
dangers and difficulties that are supposed to beset the 
beginnings of life ; and, taking into consideration the 
importance of that momentous crisis, when a fresh 
actor is introduced upon the world's great stage, it is 
not surprising that this event has, in most ages and 
countries, been associated with divers superstitions, 
and given rise to sundry customs, each of which 
has helped to invest man's entry into this world with 
all that grandeur which such a solemn occasion 
requires. 



CHAPTER 11. 

CHILDHOOD. 

Nursery Literature — The Power of Baptism — Confirmation — 
Popular Prayers — Weather Khymes — School Superstitions — 
Barring out. 

It must not be supposed that childhood has no special 
folk-lore of its own. It is, in fact, of a most varied 
kind, many of the old traditionary beliefs and practices 
associated with the nursery being relics of what the 
Scandinavian mothers taught their children in days of 
long ago. The familiar fairy-tales of our own child- 
hood still form the nursery literature in most homes, 
and are of unusual interest as embodying not only the 
myths and legends of the ancient Aryan race, but 
their conceptions about the world around them. Thus, 
for instance, the well-known story of '^ Cinderella," 
[ike many others of the same character, such as '* Jack 



CHILDHOOD. 17 

the Giant Killer," or "Beauty and the Beast," are to 
be found in almost all countries, and although the 
versions differ in some respects, yet they point to 
a common origin at a very remote period. Indeed, 
it is curious that there should still exist among the 
children of the nineteenth century an undying love for 
these survivals of Aryan literature, couched in such 
graceful and simple language that few modern com- 
positions can be found to equal them. In reading, 
therefore, about the dwellers in Wonderland, the 
young mind is unconsciously taking in primitive 
notions about the workings of nature as seen in the 
succession of day and night, the changes of the 
seasons, and so on. In the story of " Cinderella," we 
have the ancient nature-myth of the sun and the 
dawn, representing the morning sun in the form of a 
fairy prince pursuing Cinderella, the dawn, to claim 
her for his bride, whilst the envious clouds, her 
sisters, and the moon, her stepmother, strive to keep 
her in the background. It would, however, take too 
long and require a book of itself to discuss the history 
and meaning of these fairy tales which so delight the 
childish fancy, and exercise such a wholesome in- 
fluence, inculcating some of the noblest sentiments 
and loftiest teachings of the founders of our race. 
Referring then more particularly to the superstitions 
connected with childhood, we would, first of all, 
briefly speak of those relating to certain outward 
circumstances, v/hich are believed to affect more or 
less the child's welfare in life. 

Thus, it is a deep-rooted belief that a child never 

c 



18 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

thrives until after its baptism ; and in cases of ill- 
ness the clergyman is more often perhaps sent for 
by the poor from a belief in the physical virtue of 
the sacred rite itself, rather than from any actual con- 
viction of its religious importance. Indeed, how 
much potency is supposed to reside in baptisrd may 
be gathered from the countless superstitions with 
which it is associated, the omission of this rite being 
attended more often than not with fatal results. 
Hence it is frequently performed as soon as possible 
after birth, one reason being, as we have already 
seen, that so long as the child remains unbaptised it 
is thought to be at the mercy of ill-disposed fairies, 
and subject to the influence of the evil eye. Accord- 
ing to another popular fancy, not confined to our 
own country, should a child have the misfortune to 
die unchristened, it is doomed either to flit restlessly 
around its parents' abode, or to wander about in 
deserted spots, daily repining over its hard and 
unenviable lot. In Germany, tradition says that 
such children are transformed into that delusive little 
meteor known as the will-o'-the-wisp, and so ceaselessly 
]iover between heaven and earth. On one occasion, 
we are told of a Dutch parson who, happening to go 
home to his village late one evening, fell in with no 
less than three of these fiery phenomena. Remem- 
bering them to be the souls of unbaptised children, he 
solemnly stretched out his hand and pronounced the 
words of baptism over them. Much, however, to his 
terrible consternation and surprise, in the twinkling 
of an eye a thousand or more of these apparitions 



CHILDHOOD. 19 

suddenly made their appearance — no doubt all equally 
anxious to be christened. The good man, runs the 
story, was so terribly frightened, that forgetting all 
his good intentions, he took to his heels and ran home 
as fast as his legs could take him. In Lusatia, where 
the same superstition prevails, the souls of these 
unhappy children, which hover about in the form of 
will-o'-the-wisps, are said to be relieved from their 
unhappy wanderings so soon as any pious hand throws 
a handful of consecrated ground after them. 

In Scotland, to make quite sure of baptism being 
altogether propitious, it was deemed highly important 
that the person entrusted with the care of the child 
should be known by common report to be lucky. She 
was generally provided with a piece of bread and 
cheese, which she presented to the first person she met 
as an offering from the infant. If the party readily 
accepted and partook of the proffered gift, it was un- 
doubtedly a good omen ; but if refused it was consi- 
dered tantamount to wishing evil to the child. Hence 
the future destiny of the little one was often augured 
from this superstitious ceremony, which, by-the-by, 
is also practised in the West of England, but the 
events of its after-life only too often belied the weal 
and woe predicted for it. Again, it is thought highly 
necessary that the child should cry at its baptism, or else 
ill-luck will sooner or later overtake it, the idea being 
that, when the child screams and kicks, the evil spirit 
is in the act of quitting it ; its silence, on the other 
hand, indicating that it is too good for this wicked 
world. An amusing little episode in illustration of 



20 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

this curious superstition is related by Mrs. Latliam, 
in the ^^ Folk-lore Record :" — "I was lately present 
at a christening in Sussex, when a lady of the party, 
who was grandmother of the child, whispered in a 
voice of anxiety, ' The child never cried ; wh^ did 
not the nurse rouse it up 1 ' After we had left the 
church she said to her, * O nurse, why did not you 
pinch baby 1 ' And when the baby's good behaviour 
was afterwards commented upon, she observed, with a 
very serious air, < I wish that he had cried.' " In the 
same county it is considered unlucky to divulge a 
child's intended name before its baptism; and the 
water sprinkled on its forehead at the font must on 
no account be wiped off. Whilst on the subject of 
baptism, we would just note that in former years 
peculiar curative properties were supposed to reside 
in water that had been used at this rite, and on this 
account it was employed for various disorders. It 
was also regarded in Scotland as a preservative 
against witchcraft ; and eyes bathed in it were ren- 
dered for life incapable of seeing ghosts. 

It may not be inappropriate to allude here to the 
superstitions relative to confirmation, following in due 
time, as this rite does, on baptism. In Norfolk, for 
instance, it is considered unlucky to be touched by the 
bishop's left hand ; and in Devonshire, also, where a 
similar notion prevails, young people look upon his 
right hand as the lucky one, and should it not be their 
privilege to receive it, they leave the church much 
disappointed. In some of the northern counties, we 
are informed that the unfortunate recipients of the 



CHILDHOOD. 21 

left hand are doomed, then and there, to a life of single 
blessedness. This is not the only species of super- 
stition belonging to confirmation, for instances are on 
record of persons who, although confirmed in their early 
life, have again presented themselves for confirmation 
in their old age, under a conviction that the bishop's 
blessing would cure them of some bodily ailment. 
It is related that, at one of the confirmations of 
the venerable Bishop Bathurst, an old woman was 
observed eagerly pressing forward to the church. A 
by-stander, somewhat amazed at her odd conduct, 
and struck with her aged appearance, inquired if she 
was going to be confirmed, and, being answered in 
the affirmative, expressed his astonishment that she 
should have procrastinated it to such an advanced 
time of life. The old woman, however, resented his 
reproof, replying "that it was not so ; that she had 
already been bishopped seven times, and intended to 
be again, it was so good for her rheumatism ! " 

In some cases the prayers taught by the poor to 
their children are curious. Thus, a popular prayer, 
formerly in use, and not yet forgotten, is evidently 
a relic of Roman Catholic times, having been handed 
down from a period anterior to the Reformation. 
As the reader will see, the version below contains a 
distinct appeal to certain saints for their intercession 
with God on the child's behalf : — 

" Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, 
Bless the bed I lie upon ; 
Four corners to my bed, 
Four angels at its head, 



22 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

One to watch, two to pray, 

And one to "bear my soul away ; 

God within and God without, 

Sweet Jesus Christ all round about; 

If I die before I wake, ^ 

I pray to God my soul to take." 

It has been pointed out that it is very singular that 
tliis prayer should have survived the great change 
which took place in religious opinion in the sixteenth 
century, and that it even still remains in use. 
There tire many variations of it, and the following 
two distiches obtained from Lancashire are quaint, 
having been written, it has been thought, by the 
Puritans, in ridicule : — 

" Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, 

Hold the horse that I leap on. 

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, 

Take a stick and lay upon." 

A Lincolnshire clergyman, anxious to learn some- 
thing of the nature of the prayers said by the children 
of the agricultural poor, visited some of their cottages a 
few years ago in the evening, and listened to the little 
ones as they said their prayers. The concluding por- 
tion, he tells us, was always intercession for relations, 
but the form it generally took was peculiar. In the 
first place, it was not, as is the case with the more 
educated classes, " Pray God bless father and mother/ 
&c., but " Pray for father, pray for mother, pray for 
brothers and sisters," and so on. Li certain cases, 
through carelessness and rapidity, the words had 
degenerated into "Pray father, pray mother," &c. 
There can be no doubt that originally the prayer was 



CHILDHOOD. 23 

this : — ^* Pray for father ; " then a Pater noster, or an 
Ave Maria, or both, would be said ; then " Pray for 
mother," &c. After the Reformation, as time went 
on, the constant repetition of the Pater and the use 
of the Ave Maria would gradually die out with the 
change of religious ideas, and thus the prayer would 
assume its present form, " Pray for father, pray for 
mother." 

Keferring, in the second place, to the superstitions 
of children, we find an immense number of curious 
rhymes on various subjects used by them throughout 
the country. While many of these have, no doubt, 
been taught them by nurserymaids, a great part, as 
Mr. Chambers has pointed out in his "Popular Ehymes 
of Scotland," may be thought to have taken their 
rise in the childish imagination during that familiar 
acquaintance with natural objects, which it is one of 
the most precious privileges of the young to enjoy in 
rural districts. Besides, too, we must not forget that 
children seem to have a peculiar love for all natural 
objects, often finding pleasure in looking at some way- 
side flower, or in watching the movements of some 
tiny insect, which in after-years do not bring them 
the same interest. The fact, indeed, that the young 
mind is a true admirer of nature in all probability 
accounts for many of those pleasing rhymes which 
constitute much of the child's folk-lore. 

Some of the charms, for instance, used to influence 
the weather are curious, and it is worthy of note 
that these, in many cases, are not confined to child- 
hood only, but are frequently found in the mouths of 



24 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

our peasants. Thus tlie child's appeal to rain for its 
departure has become a general charm, and is familiar 
to most readers : — 

" Eain, rain, go to Spain, 
Fair weather, come again." ^ 

Aubrey considers this rhyme of great antiquity, and 
says that "it is derived from the Gentiles." Often in 
summer-time, when a thunder-shower interrupts some 
out-door game, one may hear a chorus of young voices 
shouting — 

" Rain, rain, go away, 
Come another summer's day." 

Or, as other versions have it, " Come again on washing- 
day." The appearance of a rainbow is generally, too, 
the signal for various marks of dissatisfaction on the 
part of the young, who, besides entreating it to vanish 
as soon as possible, frequently try to charm it away. 
This they do by placing a couple of straws or twigs 
cross ways on the ground, and so, to quote their phrase, 
"cross out the rainbow." Another way is to make a 
cross of two sticks, and to lay four pebbles on it, one 
at each end. Again, some of the rhymes relating to 
snow are highly quaint, the following being repeated 
when it makes its first appearance : — 

« The men of the East 
Are picking their geese, 
And sending their feathers here away, here away." 

When, however, boys wish the snow to go away, they 

sing :— 

" Snow, snow, give over, 
The cow's in the clover." 



CHILDHOOD. 25 

Thunder, in tlie North of England, is called by chil- 
dren " Kattley-bags," and during a storm the boys are 
in the habit of singing : — 

*' Rowley, Eowley, Rattley-bags, 
Take the lasses and leave the lads." 

There is a rhyme which is often repeated by the 
juvenile folks in the north and midland counties upon 
seeing the new moon, which, perhaps, may have an 
indirect allusion to its supposed lucky influence : — 

" I see the moon and the moon sees me, 
God help the parson that baptised me !" — 

containing, evidently, a congratulation upon their birth. 
Boys, too, have a curious saying respecting the re- 
flection of the sun's beams upon a ceiling, which 
they term ** Jack-a-dandy beating his wife with a stick 
of silver." If a mischievous boy, with a piece of 
looking-glass, throws the reflection into the eyes of a 
neighbour, the latter complains " he's throwing Jack- 
a-dandy in my eyes." 

Passing on to other charm-rhymes connected with 
natural objects, there are a very numerous class 
relating to the animal creation. In evening-time, 
for instance, when the dew begins to fall, boys are 
fond of hunting the large black snails, on discovering 
which they exclaim : — 

" Snail, snail, put out your horn, 
Or I'll kill your father and mother i' th' morn." 

This charm, however, is not confined to our own 
country, but under a variety of forms is found on the 
Continent. In Scotland, too, children prognosticate' 



26 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

the coming weather from the movements of this little 
creature : — 

** Snailie, snailie, shoot out your horn, 
And tell us if it will be a bonny day the morn." 

School-life, again, has its customs and super- 
stitions, many of which have been transmitted from 
generation to generation; and childhood, indeed, 
would seem quite incomplete without them. Thus, 
according to an odd notion universally accepted in 
days gone by, and still received with implicit faith, 
if the master's cane is carefully nicked at the upper 
end, and a hair inserted, it v/ill, as soon as used, split 
immediately to the very tip. In school-games, the 
usual antipathy to odd numbers is found, and a child 
is easily persuaded to give away a marble to make the 
number even. A kind of divination, also, is still 
frequently employed by boys to settle matters of 
difficulty, such, for example, as who shall be the 
leaders in a game, the choice of partners, and other 
details which are deemed of equal importance. The 
mode of procedure is this : — A long stick is thrown 
into the air, and caught by one of the parties. Each 
one then grasps it hand over hand, and he who 
succeeds in getting the last hold is the successful 
party. Mr. Henderson says that an odd expres- 
sion was formerly connected with the lending a knife 
among boys for the cutting up of a cake or other 
dainty, the borrowers being aslied to give it back 
*' laughing," i.e., with some of the good things it was 
used to cut. 

Among the many old school customs, we may close 



CHILDHOOD. 27 

our present chapter by mentioning a popular one 
known as '^ barring out," upon which, it may bo 
remembered, Miss Edgeworth has founded one of her 
instructive stories. The practice consisted in ^* bar- 
ring out " the masters from the scene of their educa- 
tional labours, the agents in this ceremony being the 
pupils of the school. It was an occasion of no small 
disorder — 

" Not school-boys at a barring out, 
Haised ever such incessant rout." 

Addison is reported to have been the leader of a 
barring out at the Lichfield Grammar School, and to 
have displayed on the occasion a spirit of disorderly 
daring very different to that timid modesty which 
so characterised his after-life. So much, then, for 
the folk-lore of childhood, a subject indeed full 
of interest, and possessing a worth far beyond the 
circle of its own immediate influence, inasmuch as 
even the simplest nursery jingle or puerile saying 
has often been found of help in proving the affinity 
of certain races, and has an ethnological value which 
the student of comparative philology would be slow to 
underrate in his task of research. 



28 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

CHAPTER III. 

LOVE AND COURTSHIP. , 

Love-tests— Plants used in Love-charms — The Lady-bird— The 
Snail— St. Valentine's Day — Midsummer Eve— Hallowe'en- 
Omens on Friday. 

No event in human life has, from the earliest times, 
been associated with a more extensive folk-lore than 
marriage, which is indeed no matter of surprise, 
considering that this is naturally looked upon as the 
happiest epoch — the summum honum — of each one's 
career in this world. Hence, to write a detailed 
account of tlie charms, omens, and divinations, as 
well as of the superstitions and customs, connected 
with marriage, including its early stages of love and 
courtship, would require a volume for itself, so 
varied and widespread is this subject of universal 
interest. 

In the present chapter, however, have been collected 
together, in as condensed a form as possible, some of 
the principal items of folk-lore connected with love and 
courtship, as we find them scattered here and there 
throughout the country. Commencing, then, with 
love-divinations, these are of every conceivable kind, 
the anxious maiden apparently having left no stone 
unturned in her anxiety to ascertain her lot in the 
marriage state. Hence in her natural longings to 
raise tlie veil of futurity, the aspirant to matrimony, 
if she be at all of a superstitious turn of mind, seldom 
lets an opportunity pass by without endeavouring to 



LOVE AND COURTSHIP. 29 

gain from it some sign or token of the kind of 
husband that is in store for her. As soon, too, as the 
appointed one has at last presented himself, she is not 
content to receive with unreserved faith his profes- 
sions of love and life-long fidelity; but, in her sly 
moments, when he is not at hand, she proves the 
genuineness of his devotion by certain charms which, 
while they cruelly belie his character, only too often 
unkindly deceive the love-sick maiden. 

In the first place, we may note that love-tests have 
been derived from a variety of sources, such as plants, 
insects, animals, birds, not to mention those countless 
other omens obtained from familiar objects to which 
we shall have occasion to allude. At the outset, 
however, it may not be uninteresting to quote the 
following account of love-charms in use about one 
hundred and fifty years ago, and which was written 
by a young lady to the editor of the Connoisseur : — 

" Arabella was in love with a clever Londoner, 
and had tried all the approved remedies. She had 
seen him several times in cofiee grounds with a sword 
by his side ; he was once at the bottom of a tea-cup 
in a coach and six, with his two footmen behind it. 
On the last May morning she went into the fields to 
hear the cuckoo ; and when she pulled ofi* her left 
shoe, she found a hair in it the exact colouring of his. 
The same night she sowed hempseed in the back yard, 
repeating the words : — 

* Hempseed I sow, hempseed I hoe, 

And he that is my true love, 
Come after me and mow.' 



30 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE, 

After that she took a clean shift and turned it, and hung 
it on the back of a chair ; and very likely he would have 
come and turned it, for she heard a step, and being 
frightened could not help speaking, and that broke 
the spell. The maid Betty recommended her young 
mistress to go backwards, without speaking a word, 
into the garden on Midsummer Eve, and gather a 
rose, keep it in a clean sheet of paper without looking 
in it till Christmas Day, it will be as fresh as in June ; 
and if she sticks this rose in her bosom, he that is to 
be her husband ^vill come and take it out. Arabella 
had tried several other strange fancies. Whenever 
she lies in a strange bed, she alv/ays ties her garters 
nine times round the bed-post, and knits nine knots in 
it, saying all the time : — 

* This knot I knit, this knot I tie, 
To see my love as he goes by, 
In his apparel and array, 
As he walks in every day.' 

On the last occasion Mr. Blossom drew the curtains 
and tucked up the clothes at the bed's feet. She has 
many times pared an apple whole, and afterwards 
flung the peel over her head, and on each occasion the 
peel formed the first letter of his Christian name or 
surname." 

Referring to the use of plants in love-charms, they 
are very numerous. One popular one consists in 
taking the leaves of yarrow, commonly called " nose- 
bleed," and tickling the inside of the nostrils, repeat- 
in !]j at the same time these lines : — 



LOVE AND COURTSHIP. 31 

" Green 'arrow, green 'arrow, you bear a white blow, 
If my love love me, my nose will bleed now ; 
If my love don't love me, it 'ont bleed a drop ; 
If my love do love me, 'twill bleed every drop." 

Some cut tlie common brake or fern just above the 
root to ascertain the initial letters of the future wife's 
or husband's name ; and the dandelion, as a plant 
of omen, is much in demand. As soon as its seeds 
are ripe they stand above the head of the plant in 
a globular form, with a feathery top at the end of 
each seed, and then are without any difficulty de- 
tached. When in this condition the flower-stalk 
must be carefully plucked, so as not to injure the 
globe of seeds, the charm consisting in blowing off the 
seeds with the breath. The number of puffs that are 
required to blow every seed clean off indicates the 
number of years that must elajDse before the person 
is married. Again, nuts and apples are very favourite 
love-tests. The mode of procedure is for a girl to 
place on the bars of the grate a nut, repeating this 
incantation : — 

**If he loves me, pop and fly; 
If he hates me, live and die." 

As may be imagined, great is the dismay if the 
anxious face of the inquirer gradually perceives the 
nut, instead of making the hoped-for pop, die and 
make no sign. Again, passing on to insects, one 
means of divination is to throw a lady-bird into the 
air, repeating meanwhile the subjoined couplet : — 

" Fly away east, and fly away west, 
Show me where lives the one I like best." 



32 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

Should this little insect chance to fly in the direction 
of the house where the loved one resides, it is regarded 
as a highly-favourable omen. The snail, again, was 
much used in love-divinations, many an eager maiden 
anxious of ascertaining her lover's name following the 
example of Hobnelia, who, in order to test the con- 
stancy of her Lubberkin, did as follows : — 

" Upon a gooseberry bush a snail I found, 
For always snails near sweetest fruit abound. 
I seized the vermin, home I quickly sped. 
And on the hearth the milk-white embers spread ; 
Slow crawled the snail, and, if I right can spell, 
In the soft ashes marked a curious L. 
Oh ! may this wondi-ous omen lucky prove. 
For ' L ' is found in Lubberkin and Love." 

Three magpies are said to prognosticate a wedding ; 
and in our rural districts the unmarried of either sex 
calculate the number of years of single blessedness 
still allotted to them by counting the cuckoo's notes 
when they first hear it in the spring. 

Some days are considered specially propitious for 
practising love-divinations. Foremost among these is 
St. Valentine's Day, a festival which has been con- 
sidered highly appropriate for such ceremonies, as 
there is an old tradition that on this day birds 
choose their mates, a notion which is frequently 
alluded to by the poets, and particularly by Chaucer, 
to which reference is made also in A Midsummer 
Night's Dream : — 

* Good morrow, friends, St. Valentine is past ; 
Beg-in the wood-birds but to couple now." 



LOVE AND COURTSHIP. 33 

Thus, the Devonshire young ladies have a fancy that 
on St. Valentine's Day they can, if they wish, make 
certain of their future. If so disposed, they go into 
the churchyard at midnight, with some hempseed in 
their hand, which, after they have walked round the 
church a certain number of times, they scatter on 
either side as they return homewards, repeating a 
certain charm. It is supposed that the true lover will 
be seen taking up the hempseed just sown, attired for 
the ceremony in a winding-sheet. Another species of 
love-divination once observed consisted in obtaining 
five bay leaves, four of which the anxious maiden 
pinned at the four comers of her pillow, and the fifth 
in the middle. If she was fortunate enough to dream 
of her lover, it was a sure sign that he would be 
married to her in the course of the year. Again, 
some young people would boil an egg hard, and, after 
taking out the contents, fill the shell with salt, the 
charm consisting in eating the shell and salt on 
going to bed at night without either speaking or drink- 
ing after it. A further method of divination was 
practised in the following way : — The lady wrote her 
lovers' names upon small pieces of paper, and, rolling 
them up in clay^ put them into a tub of water. The 
first that rose to the surface was to be not only her 
Valentine, but, in all probability, her future husband. 
Another time, which has been equally popular from 
time immemorial for such superstitious practices, is 
Midsummer Eve. People gathered on this night the 
rose, St. John's wort, trefoil, and rue, each of which ' 
was supposed to have magical properties. They set 
D 



34 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

orpine in clay upon pieces of slate in their houses, 
under the name of a Midsummer man. As the stalk 
next morning was found to incline to the right or left, 
the anxious maiden knew whether her lover> would 
prove true to her or not. 

Hallowe'en, again, has been supposed to be the 
time, of all other times, when supernatural influences 
prevail, and on this account is regarded as a night of 
sure divination in love matters. All kinds of devices 
have, therefore, been resorted to at this season, and 
in the North of England many superstitions still 
linger on, where this festival is known as " nutcrack- 
night," from nuts forming a prominent feature 
in the evening feast. Once more, Christmas Eve 
is well known to love-sick swains and languishing 
maidens as an excellent day for obtaining a glimpse 
into futurity. Numerous are the spells and ceremo- 
nies by which this is attempted. Thus in some 
places, at ^* the witching hour of night," the young 
damsel goes into the garden and plucks twelve sage 
leaves, under the belief that she will see the shadowy 
form of her future husband approach her from the 
opposite end of the ground. In trying this delicate 
mode of divination great care must be taken not to 
break or damage the sage-stalk, as should this happen 
serious consequences might ensue. The following bar- 
barous charm was also much practised in days gone 
by : — The heart was taken from a living pigeon, stuck 
full of pins, and laid on the hearth, and while it was 
burning, the form of the young person's future partner 
was believed to become visible to mortal eye. 



LOVE AND COURTSHIP. 35 

Friday has been held a good day o£ the week for 
love omens, and in Norfolk the follov/ing lines are 
repeated on three Friday nights successively, as on 
the last one it is believed that the young lady will 
dream of her future husband : — 

** To-night, to-night, is Friday night, 
Lay me down in dirty white, 
Dream who my hushand is to be ; 
And lay my children by my side, 
If I'm to live to be his bride." 

There are numerous other modes of matrimonial 
divination which still find favour in the eyes of those 
who prefer the married state to that of virginity. 
Thus the seeds of butter-dock must be scattered on 
the ground by a young unmarried girl half an hour 
before sunrise on a Friday morning in a lonesome 
place. She must strew the seeds gradually on the 
grass, saying these words : — 

" I sow, I sow ! 

Then, my own dear. 
Come here, come here, 
And mow, and mow." 

After this she will see her future husband mowing 
with a scythe at a short distance from her. She 
must, however, display no symptoms of fear, for 
should she cry out in alarm he will immediately 
vanish. This method is said to be infallible, but it 
is regarded as a bold, desperate, and presumptuous 
undertaking. Some girls, again, make a hole in the 
road where four ways meet, and apply their ear to it, 
with the hope of learning of what trade their future 



36 DOMESTIC FOLK-LOKE. 

liusband is to be. It is unnecessary, however, to 
illustrate this part of our subject further, for the 
preceding pages amply show how varied and extensive 
are the omens and divinations connected with an 
event without which life is considered in the eyes of 
most persons incomplete. Although these may seem 
trivial and often nonsensical, yet they have often 
exercised an important influence over that period of 
anxious suspense which intervenes between courtship 
and marriage, often tantalising and damping in a cruel 
manner the hopes of many an ardent lover. 



CHAPTER IV. 

MARRIAGE. 

Seasons and Days propitious to Marriage— Superstitions connected 
with the Bride— Meeting a Funera.1— Bobbing the Bride of 
Pins— Dancing in a Hog's Trough — The Wedding-cake— The 
Ring. 

In selecting the time for the marriage ceremony pre- 
cautions of every kind have generally been taken to 
avoid an unlucky month and day for the knot to be 
tied. Indeed, the old Roman notion that May mar- 
riages are unlucky survives to this day in England, 
a striking example, as Mr. Tylor has pointed out in 
his *^ Primitive Culture,'' of how an idea, the mean- 
ing of which has perished for ages, may continue 
to exist simply because it has existed. That May 
with us is not a month for marrying may easily 



MARRIAGE. 37 

1)6 seen any year from the list of weddings in the 
Times newspaper, the popular belief being summed up 
in the familiar proverb, "Marry in May and you'll 
rue the day." Some of the numerous reasons assigned 
for the ill-luck attaching to this month are the follow- 
ing : — That women disobeying the rule would be 
childless ; or if they had children, that the first-bom 
would be an idiot, or have some physical deformity ; 
or that the married couple would not live happily 
together in their new life, but soon become weary of 
each other's society — superstitions which still retain 
their hold throughout the country. In spite, however, 
of this absurd prejudice, it seems that in days gone by 
May was honoured in feudal England as the month 
of all months especially congenial to lovers. Most 
readers are no doubt acquainted with the following 
stanza in the " Court of Love :" — 

**I had not spoke so sone the words, but she, 
My soveraine, did thank me heartily, 
And saide, ' Abide, ye shall dwell still with me 
Till season come of May, for then truly 
The King of Love and all his company 
Shall holde his feste full rially and well,' 
And there I bode till that the season fell." 

On the other hand, June is a highly popular month 
for marrying, one reason perhaps being that the earth 
is then clothed in her summer beauty, and that this is 
a season of plenty. At any rate, this notion may be 
traced up to the time of the Komans, and thus when 
Ovid was anxious about the marriage of his daughter, ' 
he-^ 



38 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

*' Besolved to match, the girl, and tried to find 
What days unprosp'rous were, what moons were kind ; 
After June's sacred Ides his fancy strayed, > 
Good to the man and happy to the maid." 

Among the other seasons admitting or prohibiting 
matrimony may be mentioned the following, contained 
in a well-known rhyme : — 

*' Advent marriages doth deny, 
But Hilary gives thee liberty ; 
Septuagesima says thee nay, 
Eight days from Easter says you may ; 
Rogation bids thee to contain. 
But Trinity sets thee free again." 

Equal importance has been attached by some to 
the day of the week on which the marriage is per- 
formed. Thus Friday, on account of its being re- 
garded as an inauspicious and evil day for the com- 
mencement of any kind of enterprise, is generally 
avoided, few brides being found bold enough to run 
the risk of incurring bad luck from being married on a 
day of ill-omen. In days gone by, Sunday appears to 
have been a popular day for marriages ; although, as 
Mr. Jeaffreson, in his amusing history of "Brides 
and Bridals," remarks, " A fashionable wedding, cele- 
brated on the Lord's Day in London, or any part 
of England, would now-a-days be denounced by 
religious people of all Christian parties as an out- 
rageous exhibition of impiety. But in our feudal 
times, and long after the Bef ormation, Sunday was, of 
all days of the week, the favourite one for marriages. 
Long after the theatres had been closed on Sundays, 
the day of rest was the chief day for weddings with 



MARRIAGE. 39 

Londoners of every social class." The brides of 
Elizabethan dramas are usually represented as being 
married on Sunday. Thus in the Tamhig of the 
Shreiv, Petruchio, after telling his future father-in- 
law ^Hhat upon Sunday is the wedding-day," and 
laughing at Katharine's petulant exclamation, "111 
see thee hanged on Sunday first," says : — 

'* Father, and wife, and gentlemen, adieu; 
I will to Venice ; Sunday comes apace : 
We will have rings, and things, and give array ; 
And, kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday." 

Among the Scottish people, we are informed by 
the Registrar-General, there is a peculiar fondness for 
marrying on the last day of the year. Indeed, there 
are more marriages in Scotland on that day than in 
any week of the year, excepting, of course, the week 
in which that day occurs. Thus, in the year 1861, 
the returns give the number of marriages in the eight 
principal towns as averaging about twenty-five a day, 
exclusive of Sunday, as marrying is one of the things 
not to be done on this day in Scotland. On the 31st of 
December, however, in the same towns there were 
between 400 and 500 marriages. Curious to say, too, 
in Scotland, Friday seems to be considered a lucky 
day for weddings ; for Mr. AYatson, the City Chamber- 
lain of Glasgow, affirms that ^^ it is a well-established 
fact that nine-tenths of the marriages in Glasgow are 
celebrated on a Friday ; only a few on Tuesday and 
Wednesday ; Saturday and Monday are still more 
rarely adopted, and I have never heard of such a thing 
in Glasgow as a marriage on Sunday." 



40 DOMESnC FOLK-LORE. 

Leaving seasons and days considered propitious 
for marriage, we find, in the next place, a number of 
superstitions associated with that prominent and all- 
important personage on such an occasion, the bride. 
Thus it is above all things necessary that the sun 
should shine on her — " Blest is the bride that the sun 
shines on ! " — a notion, indeed, which, it has been 
suggested, had a practical application in years gone by 
when marriages were celebrated in the church porch. 
A wet day, at such a time, was a serious matter, 
especially as our forefathers had not the many con- 
trivances of modern times for preservation from rain. 
Whereas, now-a-days, young ladies when alluding to 
being married speak of " going to church," formerly 
they spoke of *^ visiting the church-porch." After 
prevailing for centuries, this ancient usage was dis- 
countenanced, if not actually abolished, by the 
ecclesiastical reformers of Edward YI/s reign, who 
" ordained that the performance of the binding cere- 
mony should take place in the body of the church." 
Eeferring again to the bride, it is deemed absolutely 
necessary by very many that she should weep on her 
wedding-day, if it be only a few tears, the omission 
of such an act being considered ominous of her future 
happiness. It is, too, the height of ill-luck for either 
the bride or the bridegroom to meet a funeral on going 
to or coming from the church, for if it happen to be 
that of a female, it is an indication that the bride will 
not live long, and if it should be that of a male, then 
the bridegroom is doomed to an early death. In the 
Noi^h of England there is a strong prejudice against 



MARRIAGE. 41 

a marriage taking place while there is a grave open in 
the churchyard. In many parts of the country, also, 
special care is taken that the bees are informed 
of a wedding, and as a mark of respect to them 
their hives are decorated with a favour. In 
Sussex a bride on her return home from church is 
often robbed of all the pins about her dress by the 
single women present, from a belief that whoever 
possesses one of them will be married in the course 
of a year. Much excitement and amusement are 
occasionally caused by the youthful competitors for 
this supposed charm ; and the bride herself is not 
unfrequentiy the victim of rather rough treatment. 
According to another piece of superstition, the bride, 
in removing her bridal robe and chaplet at the com- 
pletion of the marriage ceremonies, must take care to 
throw away every pin worn on this eventful day. Evil 
fortune, it is affirmed, will sooner or later inevitably 
overtake the bride who keeps even one pin used in 
the marriage toilet. Woe also to the bridesmaids if 
they retain one of them, as their chances of marriage 
will thereby be materially lessened, and anyhow they 
must give up all hope of being wedded before the 
following Whitsuntide. 

Again, in some parts of Yorkshire, to rub shoulders 
with the bride or bridegroom is considered an augury 
of a speedy marriage ; and a piece of folk-lore 
prevalent in the neighbourhood of Hull is to this 
effect : " Be sure when you go to get married that 
you don't go in at one door and out at another, or you 
will always be unlucky." Cuthbert Bede, in ^* Notes 



42 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

and Queries," records an instance of a similar super- 
stition that occurred at a wedding in a Worcestershire 
village in October, 1877. He says, " The bride and 
bridegroom at the conclusion of the ceremony left the 
church by the chancel door, instead of following the 
usual custom of walking down the church and. through 
the nave door. One of the oldest inhabitants, in 
mentioning this to me, said that it 'betokened bad 
luck,' and that she had never known a like instance 
but once in her life when the married couple went 
out of the church through the chancel door, and the 
bride was a widow before the twelve months was 
out." 

Alluding briefly to other superstitions associated 
with marriage, we are told in the North of England 
that she who receives from the bride a piece of cheese, 
cut by her before leaving the table, will be the next 
bride among the company. In Yorkshire, too, when 
a newly-married couple first enter their house, a hen 
is brought and made to cackle as a sign of good luck. 
The old Koman practice, also, of lifting the bride 
over the threshold of her husband's home, had its 
counterpart in Scotland within the present century, 
it being customary to lift the young wife over the 
doorstep, lest any witchcraft or evil eye should be 
cast upon and influence her. Indeed, we are informed 
that the same practice prevailed in the North of 
England some years ago — an interesting survival of 
the primitive superstitions of our ancestors. 

Another curious custom which was once practised 
in different parts of the country was that of the elder 



MARRIAGE. 43 

sister dancing in a hog's trough in consequence of the 
younger sister marrying before her. ^' Upon one 
occasion," says Mr. Glyde in his ^'Norfolk Garland," 
'^ a brother went through the ceremony also ; and the 
dancers performed their part so well that the trough 
itself was danced to pieces." It was considered the 
most correct thing to dance in green stockings. It 
was also customary in former years for elder sisters to 
dance barefooted at the marriage of a younger one, 
as otherwise they would inevitably become old maids. 
Hence Katharine says to her father, in allusion to 
Bianca : — 

** She is your treasure, she must have a husband. 
I must dance barefoot on her wedding-day, 
And for your love to her lead apes in hell." 

The last line, the meaning of which, however, is 
somewhat obscure, expresses a common belief as to 
the ultimate fate of old maids. Malone, on this 
passage, remarks that in Shakespeare's time 'Ho lead 
apes " was one of the employments of a bear-ward, 
who often carried about one of those animals along 
with his bear. 

Referring in the next place to some of the chief 
ceremonies associated v/ith marriage, we may note 
that " the putting up of the banns " is not without 
its superstitions, for in the North of England it is 
considered highly unlucky for a young woman to be 
present at church when this important event takes 
place, any children she may hereafter have running 
the terrible risk of being born deaf and dumb. Thus, 
a Worcestershire girl, some years since, refused to 



44 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

attend cliurch and hear the publication of her own 
banns, lest by doing so she should bring the , curse 
of dumbness on her offspring. She stated that one 
of her friends had transgressed this rule '^ by hear- 
ing herself asked out at church," and in due course 
had six children, all of whom were deaf and dumb. 
Again, the wedding-cake, without which no wedding 
would be considered complete, is evidently a survival 
of the symbolical corn-ears originally worn by the 
bride, and which in after ^times were made into cakes 
and sprinkled upon the bride's head. In course of 
time these cakes were by degrees converted into one 
large mass, enriched with almond paste ; and that the 
ingredients of a wedding-cake in the seventeenth 
century did not differ materially from one at the 
present day may be gathered from Herrick, who 
says :— 

*' This day, my Julia, thou must make, 
For mistress bride, the wedding-cako ; 
Knead but the dough, and it will be 
To paste of almonds turned by thee ; 
Or kiss it thou but once or twice, 
And for tho bride-cake there'll be spice. 

Indeed, com in one form or another has always 
entered into the marriage-ceremony, a practice which, 
as Sir John Lubbock, in his *^ Origin of Civilisation," 
has pointed out, may be found among remote savages 
or semi- civilised people. It would be difficult to 
enumerate the many superstitions, beliefs, and usages 
that have at different times clustered round the 
wedding-cake, some of which are as popular as ever. 



MARRIAGE. 45 

In days gone by, either corn ears or fragments of 
broken biscuit or cake were dropped on the newly- 
married couple on their return from church, a custom 
which is still kept up in some country districts. In 
Scotland and the North of England, for instance, as 
soon as the bride returns to her new home, one of 
the oldest inhabitants, who has been stationed on the 
threshold in readiness, throws a plateful of short- 
bread over her head, taking care that it falls outside 
the house. This is immediately scrambled for, as it 
is considered most fortunate to secure a piece, however 
small. Thus, just a century ago, Smollett, in his 
"Expedition of Humphrey Clinker" (1771), described 
how Mrs. Tabitha Lismahago's wedding-cake was 
broken over her head, and its fragments distributed 
among the bystanders, who imagined that to eat one 
of the hallowed pieces Avould insure the unmarried 
eater the delight of seeing in a vision the person to be 
his wife or her husband. Numerous other divina- 
tions, also, have been practised by means of wedding- 
cake, one of the most popular being that of passing 
it through a wedding-ring, and placing it under the 
pillow to dream upon. In some parts of Lancashire 
and Cumberland it is customary to put a ring amongst 
the ingredients of the wedding-cake, and to invite the 
guests in turn to cut a slice. The person who is 
fortunate enough to hold the knife when it comes 
upon the hidden ring is considered to be sure of 
happiness during the ensuing twelve months. Again, 
Mr. Henderson mentions an exciting custom j^ractised 
in the North at the wedding-feast. He says : — '^ The 



46 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

bride sticks lier knife into the cheese, and all at table 
endeavour to seize it. He who succeeds without 
cutting his fingers in the struggle thereby insures 
happiness in his married life. The knife is called 
^ the best man's prize/ because the * best man ' 
generally secures it. Should he fail to do sO; he will 
indeed be unfortunate in his matrimonial views. The 
knife is, at any rate, a prize for male hands only; 
the maidens try to possess themselves of a * shaping' 
of the wedding-dress, for use in certain divinations 
regarding their future husbands." The custom of 
throwing the shoe for luck at a bridal couple we shall 
notice elsewhere, a practice which is perhaps the 
principal source of merrymaking and fun at most 
weddings. We must not omit to allude to that indis- 
pensable little article at a marriage, the wedding-ring, 
concerning which so much has been written. The 
Puritans, it may be remembered, tried to abolish it, 
on account of, as they thought, its superstitious and 
heathen origin. Thus, Butler, in his " Hudibras," 
says : — 

*' Others were for abolishing 
That tool of matrimony, a ring, 
AVith which the unsanctified bridegroom, 
Is mairy'd only to a thumb." 

Though, however, the ring of gold is generally looked 
upon as a necessity in the marriage-ceremony, yet it 
is not legally so, but there is a very strong prejudice 
against being married without it, and it would be no 
easy task to find a couple brave enough to act in 
opposition to this universal superstition. Thus, by 



MARRIAGE. 47 

way of example, Mr. Jeaffreson, in his " Brides and 
Bridals," tells us that the poor Irishman is so con- 
vinced that a marriage lacks validity unless it has 
been solemnised with a golden ring, that, when he 
is too needy to buy a circlet of the most precious 
metal, he hires a hoop of gold for use on his wedding- 
day. Not long since a tradesman, in a market town 
at Munster, made a considerable addition to his 
modest income by letting out rings of gold to persons 
about to marry, who restored the trinkets to their 
owner after being wedded at church. A case is re- 
lated, on the other hand, of a party that came to the 
church and requested to be married with a church 
key. It was '^ a parish wedding," and the parish 
authorities, though willing to pay the church fees, 
because, as the account runs, "they were glad to get 
rid of the girl," had not felt disposed to provide the 
wedding-ring. The clerk, however, feeling some hesi- 
tation as to the substitution of the church key, 
stepped into a neighbouring house, and there bor- 
rowed an old curtain ring, with which the marriage 
was solemnised. Again, most ladies are especially 
particular in their notions respecting their wedding- 
ring, objecting under any pretence to take it off from 
their finger, extending, it would seem, the expression 
of " till death us do part," even to this pledge and 
token of matrimony. 

In various parts of the country we find many a 
curious marriage custom^ of which, however, we can 
only give one or two instances. Thus, in some parts 
of Kent, it was formerly customary to strew the 



48 DOMESTIC POLK-LORE. 

pathway to the church of the bridal couple, not with 
flowers, but with emblems of the bridegroom's trade. 
A carpenter, for instance, walked on shavings, a 
paperhanger on slips of paper, a blacksmith on pieces 
of old iron, and so on. In some parts of Durham the 
bridal party was, in days gone by, generally escorted to 
church by men armed with guns, which they fired 
again and again in honour of the festive occasion. 
In Scotland there was an amusing custom, called 
" Creeling the bridegroom." A basket or creel was 
filled with heavy stones and fixed to the bridegroom's 
shoulder, and with this burden he was obliged to run 
about until his wife unfastened the creel 



CHAPTER V. 

DEATH AND BURIAL. 

Warnings of Death— The Howling of Dogs— A Cow in the Grarden 
— Death-presaging Birds— Plants— The Will-o'-the-Wisp — The 
Sympathy between Two Personalities — Prophecy — Dying 
Hardly — The Last Act — Place and Position of the Grave. 

The superstitions associated with the last stage of 
human life are most numerous ; and that this should 
be so is not surprising when it is considered how, 
from the earliest time, a certain dread has been 
attached to death, not only on account of its awful 
mysteriousness, but owing to its being the crisis of an 
entirely new phase of the soul^s existence. 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 49 

Commencing then with popular omens, it may be 
noted that every incident out of the common course 
of natural events is looked upon by the superstitious 
as indicative of approaching death. Hence we find 
the credulous ever conjuring up in their minds 
imaginary prognostications of this sad occurrence, 
which, apart from the needless terror they cause, 
are based on no foundation of truth. Foremost 
among these is the howling of a dog at night, a 
superstition which, while not confined to our own 
country, appears to have been almost as well known 
in ancient times as at the present day. As a plea, 
however, for its prevalence, even among the educated, 
we might urge that it is not unnatural for the mind, 
when unstrung and overbalanced by the presence of 
sickness and impending death, to be over-sensitive, 
and to take notice of every little sound and sight 
which may seem to connect themselves with its 
anxiety. Out of the innumerable instances which 
are recorded in our own country respecting this 
popular superstition, may be mentioned one which 
happened a few years ago at Worthing. It appears 
that no slight consternation was caused by a New- 
foundland dog, the property of a clergyman in the 
neighbourhood, lying down on the steps of a house 
and howling piteously, refusing to be driven away. 
As soon as it was known that a young lady, long an 
invalid, had died there, so much excitement took place . 
that news of the occurrence reached the owner of the 
dog, who came to Worthing to inquire into the truth 
of it. Unfortunately, however, for the lovers of and 



50 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

believers in the marvellous, it eventually turned out 
that the dog had by accident been separated from his 
master late in the evening, and had been seen running 
here and there in search of him, and howling at the 
door of the stable where he put up his horse, and 
other places which he often visited in Worthing. It 
happened, moreover, that his master had been in the 
habit of visiting the particular house where the young 
lady had died, which at once accounted . for the 
apparent mystery. In the same way, indeed, other 
similar instances of this superstition might be easily 
cleared up, if only properly investigated at the time 
of the occurrence. The howling of the dog is ascribed 
by some to its keen sense of the odour of approaching 
mortal dissolution ; whereas others affirm that this 
animal can see the spirits which hover round the house 
of sickness, ready at the moment of death to bear away 
the soul of the departed one to its distant home. In 
Aryan mythology the dog is said to see ghosts, and in 
Germany, at the present day, a dog howling before a 
house portends either a death or a fire. In Wales, 
it is thought that horses, too, have the gift of 
seeing spirits. Carriage-horses, it is said, have 
been known to display every sign of the utmost 
terror, although the occupants of the carriage could 
see no cause for alarm. Such an occurrence is con- 
sidered highly ominous, and thought to forebode that 
a funeral will soon pass by that way, bearing to his 
resting-place some person not dead at the time of the 
horse's fright. 

Whilst speaking of animals in connection with 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 51 

death, it may be noted that an ox or a cow breaking 
into a garden is an omen of death. In illustration of 
this notion a correspondent of Notes and Queries relates 
the following narrative as written down by himself 
about the time to which it relates. He says, "Though 
I laugh at the superstition, the omen was painfully 
fulfilled in my case. About the middle of March, 
1843, some cattle were driven close to my house, and 
the back door being open, three got into our little bit 
of garden, and trampled it. When our school-drudge 
came in the afternoon, and asked the cause of the 
confusion, she expressed great sorrow and apprehen- 
sion on being told — said that it was a bad sign — that 
we should hear of three deaths within the next six 

months. Alas ! in April we heard of dear J ^s 

murder; a fortnight after A died; and to-morrow, 

August 10th, I attend the funeral of my excellent 
son-in-law. I have just heard of the same omen from 
another quarter. But what is still more remarkable 

is that when I went down to Mr. M 's burial, and 

was mentioning the superstition, they told me that 
while he was lying ill, a cow got into the front garden 
and was driven out with great difficulty. It is still a 
common saying in Scotland, when any one is dan- 
gerously ill, and not likely to recover, ' The black ox 
has trampled upon him.' " 

Another common omen of death is the hovering of 
birds around a house, and their tapping against the 
window-pane. Amongst the death-presaging birds may 
be mentioned the raven, the crow, and the swallow. 
The crowing of the cock, also, at the dead of night is 



52 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

regarded as equally ominous. The appearance of a 
jackdaw is in some parts of the country much 
dreaded. Thus a correspondent of N'otes and 
Queries tells us, that a stonemason at Clifton related 
to him an accident that happened to a workman at 
the suspension bridge over the Avon, at the time 
when the river was simply spanned by a single chain, 
placing much emphasis on the fact that a single jack- 
daw had been noticed by some of the workmen perched 
upon the centre of the chain, and had been regarded 
by them as a precursor of death. We must not omit 
the evil reputation of the owl and the magpie ; and 
a well-known superstition current in some parts that 
to catch a sparrow and keep it confined in a cage is 
an omen of death. Once more, it is a bad sign when 
an invalid asks for a dish of pigeons to eat, such an 
occurrence being considered an omen of his approach- 
ing death. Some also affirm that if one hears the 
cuckoo's first note when in bed, illness or death is 
certain to come upon the hearer or one of his family. 
If any one be about to die suddenly, or lose a relation, 
the cuckoo will light upon a piece of touchwood,' or 
rotten bough, and cuckoo. 

Plants, in the next place, are sometimes regarded as 
ominous of approaching mortality. When, for example, 
an apple-tree or pear-tree blooms twice in the year it 
denotes a death in the family. If, too, green broom 
be picked when in bloom it is believed that the 
father or mother will die in the course of the year. 
Mrs. Latham, in her " West Sussex Superstitions," 
gives the following touching little anecdote : — "A 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 53 

poor girl, who was lingering in the last stage of con- 
sumption, but whose countenance had always lighted 
up with pleasure at the sight of flowers, appeared one 
morning so exceedingly restless and unhappy after a 
fresh nosegay of gay spring flowers had been laid 
upon her bed, that I asked her if the scent of them 
was disagreeable to her. ' Oh, no !' she exclaimed, 
' they are very nice indeed to smell ; but yet I should 
be very glad if you would throw away that piece of 
yellow broom ; for they do say that death comes with 
it if it is brought into the house in blossom during 
the month of May.' " According to a Yorkshire super- 
stition, if a child gathers the germander speedwell its 
mother will die during the year ; and others consider 
it equally unlucky to bring the first snowdrop of the 
year into the house. To dream that a tree is uprooted 
in one's garden is regarded as a death-warning to the 
owner. Indeed plants may be said to hold an im- 
portant place in the folk-lore of death, so many 
curious legends and quaint superstitions having 
clustered round them both in ancient and modern 
times. Thus, to quote one further instance, if yew 
is accidentally brought into the house at Christmas 
among the evergreens, it is looked upon as a sign that 
a death will occur in the family before the end of the 
year. 

Among other omens of death, may be noticed 
the will-o'-the-wisp, which has on this account been, 
much dreaded, its undulating movement being care- 
fully observed, from an anxiety to ascertain in which 
direction it disappears, as it is supposed to be — - 



54 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

" The hateful messenger of heavy things, 
Of death and dolour telling " 

to the inliabitants of the house nearest that spot. We 
have heard also of an occasion in which considerable 
uneasiness v/as created by a pale light moving over the 
bed of a sick person, and after flickering for some time 
in diflerent parts of the room to vanish through the 
window. It happened, however, that the mystery 
was cleared up soon afterwards, for, on a similar light 
appearing, it was found to proceed from a luminous 
insect, which proved to be the male glow-worm. In 
the same way the " corpse-candles " in Wales, also 
called the " fetch-lights," or " dead man's candles," are 
regarded as forerunners of death. Sometimes this 
unlucky sign appears in the form of a plain yellow 
candle, in the hand of a ghost, and at other times it 
looks like "a stately flambeau, stalking along un- 
supported, burning with ghastly blue flame." It is 
considered highly dangerous to interfere with this 
fatal portent, and persons who have attempted to 
check its course are reported to have been severely 
afflicted in consequence, many being actually struck 
down on the spot where they stood as a punishment 
for their audacity. 

There is a popular idea prevalent in Lancashire 
that to build or even to rebuild a house is always 
fatal to one member of the family — generally to the 
one who may have been the principal promoter of the 
2)lans for the building or alteration. Again, we are 
also told how the household clock has been known to 
depart from its customary precision in order to warn 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 55 

its owner of approaching death by striking thirteen, 
A clergyman relates that one evening he called on an 
old friend more than eighty years of age, who had lost 
her husband about six months before. Whilst sitting 
with her he heard the clock strike the hour in an 
adjoining room, and counted it seven. Being surprised 
that it was no later he involuntarily took out his watch, 
and found that it was in reality eight o'clock. The 
old lady noticing this remarked, " Ah ! tlie clock lost 
a stroke against my poor husband's death, and I have 
not altered it since." 

According to another very common superstition 
there seems to be a kind of sympathy and harmony 
between two personalities, whereby dying persons 
themselves announce their departure to their friends 
in certain mysterious ways. Countless instances 
are on record of such supposed forebodings of death. 
A curious and interesting example of this species of 
folk-lore happened not so very long ago, in connection 
with the lamented death of Mr. George Smith, the 
eminent Assyriologist. This famous scholar died at 
Aleppo, on the 19th of August, 1876, at or about the 
hour of six in the afternoon. On the same day, and 
at about the same time, a friend and fellow-worker of 
Mr. Smith's — Dr. Delitzsch — was passing within a 
stone' s-throw of the house in which Mr. Smith had 
lived whilst in London, when he suddenly heard his 
own name uttered aloud in a " most piercing cry/' 
v\^hich, says The Daily News (Sept. 12tli, 1876) 
thrilled him to the marrow. The fact impressed him 
so strongly that he looked at his watch, noted the hour, 



56 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

and, although he did not mention the circumstance at 
the time, recorded it in his note-book. 

Again, as a further illustration, we are tc^d how 
on board one of Her Majesty's ships lying off Ports- 
mouth, the officers being one day at mess, a young 
lieutenant suddenly laid down his knife and fork, 
pushed away his plate, and turned extremely pale. 
He then rose from the table, covered his face with his 
hands, and retired. The president of the mess, supposing 
him to be ill, sent to make inquiries. At first he was 
unwilling to reply ; but on being pressed he confessed 
that he had been seized by a sudden and irresistible 
impression that a brother he had in India was dead. 
"He died," said he, "on the 12th August, at six 
o'clock; lam perfectly convinced of it." ISTo argu- 
ment could overthrow his conviction, which in due 
course of time was verified to the letter. Events 
of this kind, which in the minds of many seem to 
point to a mysterious sympathy between two indi- 
viduals, are explained by others as simply the result 
of " fancy and coincidence. " Anyone, it is argued, 
may fall into a brown study, and emerge from it with 
a stare, and the notion that he heard his name spoken. 
That is the part of fancy, and the simultaneous event 
is the part of coincidence. Against this theory 
it will always be argued that these coincidences are 
too many to be accidental, and this position, as a 
writer in The Daily News has shown, will generally 
be met by counter-efforts to weaken the evidence for 
each individual case, and so to reduce the cumulative 
evidence to nothing. Taking into consideration 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 57 

however, the countless instances which are on record 
of this kind, many of them apparently resting on evi- 
dence beyond impeachment, we must, whilst allotting to 
them the credence they deserve, honestly admit they 
are occasionally beyond the limits of human explana- 
tion. 

From a very early period there has existed a belief 
in the existence of the power of prophecy at that 
period which precedes death. It probably took its 
origin in the assumed fact that the soul becomes 
divine in the same rate as the connection with the 
body is loosened. It has been urged in support of 
this theory that at the hour of death the soul is, as 
it Avere, on the confines of two worlds, and may possibly 
at the same moment possess a power which is both 
pros23ective and retrospective. Shakespeare in his 
Richard II. (Act ii., sc. 1) makes the dying Gaunt, 
alluding to his nephew, the young and self-willed king, 
exclaim : — 

" Methinks I am a prophet new inspired, 
And thus expiring do foretell of him." 

Again in 1 Henry IV. (Act v., sc. 4), the brave 
Percy, when in the agonies of death, conveys the same 
idea in the following words : — 

*' 0, I could prophesy, 

But that the earthy and cold hand of death 

Lies on my tongue." 

Some have sought for the foundation of this' 
belief in the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis : — " And 
Jacob called his sons, and said, Gather yourselves 
together, that I may tell you that which shall befall 



58 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

you in the last days. And when Jacob had made an 
end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet 
into his bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was 
gathered unto his people." This notion has not died 
out, but still prevails in Lancashire and other parts 
of England. 

Referring to death itself, there is a widespread 
belief that deaths mostly occur during the ebbing of 
the tide : a superstition to which Charles Dickens has 
so touchingly alluded in " David Copperfield.'' While 
the honest-hearted Mr. Peggotty sat by the bedside 
of poor Barkis, and watched life's flame gradually 
growing dimmer, he said to David Copperfield, ^^ People 
can't die along the coast except when the tide's 
pretty nigh out. They can't be born unless it's pretty 
nigh in. IsTot properly born till flood. He's agoing 
out with the tide — he's agoing out with the tide. 
It's ebb at half-arter three, slack water half an hour. 
If he lives till it turns, he'll hold his own till past 
the flood, and go out with the next tide." And after 
many hours' watching, " it being low water, he went 
out with the tide." 

Persons, too, are said to ^^ die hard," to quote a 
popular phrase, or, in other words, to have a painful 
and prolonged death, when there are pigeons' feathers 
in the bed. Hence, some will not allow dying persons 
to lie on a feather bed at all, maintaining that it very 
much increases the pain, and retards the inevitable 
crisis of their departure. Many, on the other hand, 
have a superstitious feeling that it is a great misfor- 
tune, nay, even a judgment, not to die in a bed. 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 59 

Many are tlie anecdotes illustrative of the former 
superstition, one or two of which we will quote. 
Thus a Sussex nurse one day told the wife of her 
clergyman that *^ never did she see any one die so 
hard as old Master Short ; and at last she thought 
(though his daughter said there were none) that there 
must be game-feathers in the bed. She, therefore, 
tried to pull it from under him, but he was a heavy 
man and she could not manage it alone, and there was 
no one with him but herself, and so she got a rope 
and tied it round him and pulled him by it off the 
bed, and he went off in a minute quite comfortable, 
just like a lamb." Again, one day, when an old woman 
near Yarmouth was speaking of the burning of game- 
feathers as a precaution in case of death, her neigh- 
bours said to her, *^ Of course we don't believe that 
can have anything to do with a hard death," where- 
upon she replied, '^Then you yourself use such 
feathers." ^' Oh, no; we always burn them, unless 
we want them for a chair-cushion." The same notion 
prevails in Yorkshire with regard to cocks' feathers. 
According to another popular fancy a person cannot 
die comfortably under the cross-beam of a house, and 
we are told of the case of a man of whom it was said 
at his death, that after many hours' hard dying, being 
removed from the position under the cross-beam, he 
departed peaceably. 

Again, the interval between death and burial has 
generally been associated with various superstitious 
fears and practices. Thus, as soon as the corpse is 
laid out there is still a widespread custom of placing 



60 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

a plate of salt upon the breast, the reason being 
no doubt to prevent the body swelling ; although 
there is a belief that it acts as a charm against 
any attempt on the part of evil spirits to disturb the 
body. Pennant tells us that formerly in Scotland, 
*^ the corpse being stretched on a board and covered 
with a coarse linen wrapper, the friends laid on the 
breast of the deceased a wooden platter, containing a 
small quantity of salt and earth, separate and un- 
mixed ; the earth an emblem of the corruptible body, 
the salt as an emblem of the immortal spirit." Mr. 
I^apier, in his " Folk-Lore of the West of Scotland," 
points out that we may find another explanation for 
the plate of salt on the breast in the *^ sin-eaters," 
persons who, in days gone by, when a person died, 
were sent for to come and eat the sins of the deceased. 
On their arrival their first act was to place a plate of 
salt and one of bread on the breast of the corpse, 
repeating a series of incantations, after which they 
devoured the contents of the plates. By this cere- 
mony the deceased person was supposed to be 
relieved of such sins as would have kept his spirit 
hovering about his relations to their discomfort and 
/annoyance. 
^ It is customary, especially among the poor, for 
those who visit a house while the dead body is lying 
in it to touch the corpse, thereby showing that they 
owe the departed one no grudge. This practice, in 
all probability, originated in the belief that a corpse 
would bleed at the touch of the murderer, constant 
allusions to which we find in old authors. 



DEATH AND BURlAL. 61 

The practice of watching the dead body until its 
burial is not yet obsolete, a custom indeed which, 
among the Irish, is even still occasionally the scene 
of the most unseemly revelries, those present often- 
times indulging in excessive drinking and riotous 
merry-making. In days gone by, however, this prac- 
tice was attended with every mark of respect to the 
deceased one, the leading idea being to see that the 
devil did not carry off the body. 

Lastly, since the formation of cemeteries, many of 
the quaint old funeral customs which formerly existed 
in many of our country villages have passed away. 
Now-a-days, the " last act," as the committal of the 
body to the grave has been termed, has been shorn of 
much of its pomp. Thus, in the North of England 
it was customary, only a few years ago, to carry '* the 
dead with the sun " to the grave, a practice correspond- 
ing with the Highland usage of making " the deazil," 
or walking three times round a person, according to 
the course of the sun. On one occasion, in the village 
of Stranton, near West Hartlepool, the vicar was 
standing at the churchyard gate, awaiting the 
arrival of the funeral procession, when, much to his 
surprise, the entire group, who had come within a few 
yards of him, suddenly turned back and marched 
round the churchyard wall, thus traversing its west, 
north, and east boundaries. On inquiring the reason 
of this extraordinary procedure, one of the mourners 
quickly replied, *' Why, ye wad no hae them carry the 
dead again the sun ; the dead maun ay go wi' the 
sun." This is not unlike a Welsh custom mentioned 



62 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

by Pennant, who tells us that when a corpse was con- 
veyed to the churchyard from any part of the town, 
great care was always taken that it should be carried 
the whole distance on the right-hand side of the road. 
A curious custom, which still survives at Welsh 
funerals, is termed "the parson's penny." After 
reading the burial service in the church, the clergy- 
man stands behind a table while a psalm is being 
sung. In the meantime each of the mourners places a 
piece of money on the table for his acceptance. This 
ceremony is regarded as a token of respect to the 
deceased, although it was no doubt originally intended 
to compensate the clergyman for praying for the soul 
of the departed. In some Welsh parishes a similar 
custom, called " spade-money," is observed. As soon 
as the corpse has been committed to its resting-place, 
the grave-digger presents his spade as a receptacle for 
donations, these offerings, which often amount to a 
goodly sum, being regarded as his perquisites. 

From time immemorial there has been a popular 
prejudice among the inhabitants of rural villages 
against "burial without the sanctuary." This does not 
imply in unconsecrated ground, but on the north side 
of the church, or in a remote corner of the church- 
yard. The origin of this repugnance is said to have 
been the notion that the northern part was that which 
was appropriated to the interment of unbaptised in- 
fants, excommunicated persons, or such as had laid 
violent hands upon themselves. Hence it was gene- 
rally known as "the wrong side of the church." In 
many parishes, therefore, this spot remained unoc- 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 63 

cupied wliile tlie remaining portion of the church- 
yard was crowded. White, in his ^^ History of 
Selborne," alluding to this superstition, says that as 
most people wished to be buried on the south side of 
the churchyard, it became such a mass of mortality 
that no person could be interred ^^ without disturbing 
or displacing the bones of his ancestors." A clergy- 
man of a rural parish in Norfolk says : — ^^ If I were 
on any occasion to urge a parishioner to inter a de- 
' ceased relative on the north side of the church, he 
would answer me with some expression of surprise, 
if not of offence, at the proposal^ " No, sir, it is not 
in the sanctuary." 

Great attention has, also, generally been paid to 
the position of the grave, the popular idea being 
from east to west, while that from north to south 
has been considered not only dishonourable, but 
unlucky. Indeed, the famous antiquary, Thomas 
Hearne, was so particular on this point that he left 
orders for his grave to be made straight by a com- 
pass, due east and west. In Cymheline (Act iv., sc. 2), 
Guiderius, speaking of the apparently dead body of 
Imogen disguised in man's apparel, says : — 

" Nay, Cadwal, we must lay Hs head to the east ; 
My father hath a reason for 't. " 

It is worthy of notice that the burial of the dead 
among the Greeks was in the line of east and west j 
and thus it is not to late and isolated fancy, but to 
the carrying on of ancient and widespread solar ideas, 
as Mr. Tylor has so clearly shown, that we trace the 



64 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

well-known legend that the body of Christ was laid 
towards the east, and the Christian usage of digging 
graves east and west. A pretty custom was once 
observed in many of our country villages at the funeral 
of a young unmarried girl, or of a bride who died 
in her honeymoon ; a chaplet of flowers being carried 
before the corpse by a girl nearest in age, size, and 
resemblance, and afterwards hung up in the church 
over the accustomed seat of the deceased. 

Among other customs connected with burial may 
be mentioned " funeral feasts/' which have prevailed 
in this and other countries from the earliest times, 
and are supposed to have been borrowed from the 
Ccena feralis of the Romans : an oflering, consisting of 
milk, honey, wine, aloes, and strewed flowers, to the 
ghost of the deceased. In a variety of forms this 
custom has prevailed amongst most nations, the idea 
being that the spirits of the dead feed on the viands 
set before them. In Christian times, however, these 
funeral ofierings have passed into commemorative 
banquets, under which form they still exist amongst 
us. In the north of England the funeral feast is 
called " an arval," and the loaves that are sometimes 
distributed among the poor are termed ^^ arval bread.'' 

The poor seem to have always been fond of inviting 
a large number of friends to attend a funeral. In- 
stances are on record of a barrel of beer, two gallons 
of sack, and four gallons of claret being consumed at 
a funeral, and the cost of wine has been five times 
more than the cost of the coffin. In one of the 
parishes on the borders of Norfolk there is a tradition, 



THE HUMAN BODY. 65 

says Mr. Glyde in his " Norfolk Garland," tliat when 
the warrior Sir Robert Atte Tye was buried, four 
dozen of wine were drunk, according to his last 
directions, over his grave, before the coffin was 
covered with earth. Many curious anecdotes might 
be given of funerals having been solemnised within 
the church-porch, and of the scruples entertained by 
great men as to the practice of interment in churches. 
A part of the churchyard, too, was occasionally left 
unconsecrated for the purpose of burying excom- 
municated persons. Among some of the superstitions 
associated with burial we may just note that it is 
considered by some unlucky to meet a funeral ; and 
that, according to another notion, the ghost of the last 
person buried keeps watch over the churchyard till 
another is buried, to whom he delivers his charge. 



CHAPTEH yi. 

THE HUMAN BODY. 

Superstitions about Deformity, Moles, &c.— Tingling of the Ear— 
The Nose— The Ej^e— The Teeth— The Hair— The Hand- 
Dead Man's Hand— The Feet. 

In the preceding pages we have given a brief survey 
of that wide-spread folk-lore with which the life of 
man has been invested, stage by stage, from the cradle 
to the grave. In like manner the popular imagina- 
tion has, in most countries from the earliest times, 
F 



66 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

woven round tlie human body a thick network of 
superstitions, many of which, while of the nature of 
omens, are supposed to indicate certain facts, such as 
the person's character, the events connected with his 
life, and to give that insight into his future career 
which eager curiosity would strive to ascertain. Thus, 
according to an old prejudice, which is not quite 
extinct, those who are defective or deformed are 
marked by nature as prone to mischief, in accord- 
ance with which notion Shakespeare makes Margaret, 
speaking of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in Kinj 
Richard III. (Act i., sc. 3), say : — 

" Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rotting hog 
Thou that was seal'd in thy nativity 
The slave of nature and the son of hell." 

Moles, too, have generally been thought to denote good 
or ill-luck from their position on the body. Thus one 
on the throat is a sign of luck, but one on the left side 
of the forehead near the hair is just the reverse. Again, 
a mole on either the chin, ear, or neck is an indication 
of riches, but one on the breast signifies poverty. 
Indeed, if we are to believe the " Greenwich Fortune- 
teller," a popular chap-book in former years, omens to 
be drawn from moles are almost unlimited. 

Kef erring, however, more especially to the folk-lore 
associated \vith the different parts of the human body, 
this, as we have already stated, is very extensive, 
being in many cases the legacy bequeathed to us by 
our ancestors. Commencing, then, with the ear, 
there is a well-known superstition that a tingling of 
the right one is lucky, denoting that a friend is speak- 



THE HUMAN BODY. 67 

ing well of one ; a tingling of the left implying the 
opposite. This notion differs according to the locality, 
as in some places it is the tingling of the left ear which 
denotes the friend, and the tingling of the right ear 
the enemy. Shakespeare, in Much Ado about NotJiing 
(Act iii., sc. 1), makes Beatrice say to Ursula and 
Hero, who had been talking of her, " What fire 
is in mine earsi" in allusion, it is generally sup- 
posed, to this popular fancy, which is old as the 
time of Pliny, who says, " When our ears tingle some 
one is talking of us in our absence." Sir Thomas 
Browne also ascribes the idea to the belief in guardian 
angels, who touch the right or left ear according as 
the conversation is favourable or not to the person. 
The Scotch peasantry have an omen called the ^^death- 
bell " — a tingling in the ears which is believed to 
announce some friend's death. Hogg alludes to this 
superstition in his "Mountain Bard :" — 

*' lady, 'tis dark, an' I heard the death-bell, 
An' I darena gae yonder for gowd nor fee," 

and gives also an amusing anecdote illustrative of 
it : — " Our two servant-girls agreed to go on an 
errand of their own, one night after supper, to a 
considerable distance, from which I strove to persuade 
them, but could not prevail ; so, after going to the 
apartment where I slept, I took a drinking-glass, and' 
coming close to the back of the door made two or 
three sweeps round the lip of the glass with my 
finger, which caused a loud shrill sound, and then 
overheard the following dialogue : — 



68 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

^^ B. * Ah, mercy ! the dead-bell went through my 
head just now with such a knell as I never heard/ 

"/. a heard it too.' 

^^ B. ^Did you indeed? That is remarkable. I 
never knew of two hearing it at the same time 
before.' 

" /. * We will not go to Midgehope to-night.' 

" ^. ^ I would not go for all the world ! I shall 
warrant it is my poor brother Wat. Who knows 
what these wild Irish may have done to him V " 

The itching of the nose, like that of the ears, is not 
without its signification, denoting that a stranger will 
certainly appear before many hours have passed by, in 
allusion to which Dekker, in his "Honest Whore," 
says : — *' We shall ha' guests to-day ; my nose itcheth 
so." In the north of England, however, if the nose 
itches it is reckoned a sign that the person will 
either be crossed, vexed, or kissed by a fool; whereas 
an old writer tells us that " when a man's nose 
itcheth it is a signe he shall drink wine." Many 
omens, too, are gathered from bleeding of the nose. 
Thus Grose says, " One drop of blood from the 
nose commonly foretells death or a very severe fit of 
sickness; three drops are still more ominous;" and 
according to another notion one drop from the left 
nostril is a sign of good luck, and vice versd. Bleed- 
ing of the nose seems also to have been regarded as a 
sign of love, if we may judge from a passage in 
Boulster's *' Lectures," published early in the seven- 
teenth century : — " ^ Did my nose ever bleed when I 
was in your company]' and, poor wretch, just as 



THE HUMAN BODY. 69 

she spake this, to show her true heart, her nose 
fell a-bleeding." Again, that bleeding of the nose 
was looked upon as ominous in days gone by, we may 
gather from Launcelot's exclamation in the Merchant 
of Venice (Act ii., sc. 5), " It was not for nothing 
that my nose fell a-bleeding on Black Monday last at 
six o'clock" — a superstition to which many of our 
old writers refer. Among further superstitions 
connected with the nose we may mention one in 
Cornwall, known as '' the blue vein," an illustration 
of which occurs in Mr. Hunt's ^' Popular Romances of 
the West of England," who relates the following little 
anecdote : — " A fond mother was paying more than 
ordinary attention to a fine healthy-looking child, a 
boy about three years old. The poor woman's breast 
was heaving with emotion, and she struggled to repress 
her sighs. Upon inquiring if anything was really 
wrong, she said, * The old lady of the house had just 
told her that the child could not live long because he 
had a blue vein across his nose.' " This piece of folk- 
lore, which caused the anxious mother such distress, 
is not confined to the West of England, but crops up 
here and there throughout the country. While speak- 
ing of the nose, we may just note that it is the subject 
of various proverbs. Thus ** to put the nose out of 
joint " means to supplant one in another's favour, and 
the popular one of '' paying through the nose," im- 
plying extortion, may, it has been suggested, have 
originated in a poll-tax levied by Odin, which Avas 
called in Sweden a nose-tax, and was a penny per nose 
or poll. Once more, we have the term "nose of 



70 DOMESTIC FOLK-LOHE. 

wax " applied to a person who is very accommodating, 
and one may occasionally hear the phrase " wipe the 
nose " used in the sense of affront. 

Leaving the nose, however, we find similar odd 
fancies attached to the eye. In many places we are 
told that "it's a good thing to have meeting eyebrovrs, 
as such a person will never know trouble," although, 
curious to say, on the Continent quite a different 
significance is attributed to this peculiarity. In Greece, 
for instance, it is held as an omen that the man is a 
vampire, and in Denmark and Germany it is said to 
indicate that he is a werewolf. In China, also, there is 
a proverb that " people whose eyebrows meet can never 
expect to attain to the dignity of a minister of state. '^ 
There can be no doubt that, according to the general 
idea, meeting eyebrows are not considered lucky : — 

" Trust not the man whose eyebrows meet, 
For in his heart you'll find deceit." 

Thus, Charles Kingsley, in '' Two Years Ago,'' 
speaks of this idea in the following passage : — "Tom 
began carefully scrutinising Mrs. Harvey's face. It 
had been very handsome. It was still very clever, but 
the eyebrows clashed together downwards above her 
nose, and rising higher at the outward corners, 
indicated, as surely as the restless down-drop eye, a 
character self-conscious, furtive, capable of great 
inconsistencies, possibly of great deceit.'' 

Again, the itching of the right eye is considered a 
lucky omen, an idea that is very old, and may be traced 
as far back as the time of Theocritus, who says : — 

" My right eye itches now, and I shall see my love," 



THE HUMAN BODY. 71 

According to the antiquary Grose, however, who 
collected together so many of tlie superstitions preva- 
lent in his day, ^'AYhen the right eye itches, the party 
affected will shortly cry ; if the left, they will laugh.'' 
The power of fascination has generally been considered 
to be a peculiar quality of the eye, a notion by no 
means obsolete, and numerous charms have been 
resorted to for counteracting its influence. In our 
chapter on ^' Birth and Infancy " we have already 
spoken of the danger to which young children are said 
to be subject from the malevolent power of some evil 
eye, and of the pernicious effects resulting from it. 
Shakespeare gives several references to it, one of which 
occurs in the Merry Wives of Windsor (Act v., sc. 5), 
where Pistol says of Falstaff : — • 

" Yile worm,, thou wast o'erlook'd even in tky birth." 

And once more, in Titus Andronicus (Act ii., sc. 1), 
Aaron speaks of Tamora as 

^' fetter'd in amorous chains — 

And faster bound to Aaron's charming eyes, 
Than is Prometheus tied to Caucasus." 

It was not very long ago that a curious case of this 
superstition was brought before the guardians of the 
Shaftesbury Union, in which an applicant for relief 
stated his inability to work because he had been 
"overlooked" by his sister-in-law. Although his 
wife had resorted for help to a wise-woman, yet sh<3 
was unable to remove the spell under which he lay, 
and thus the unfortunate man, incapable of labour 
applied for relief, which he did not obtain. 



72 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

In the next place, some of the superstitions 
connected with the teeth are quaint, and afford oppor- 
tunities to the credulous for drawing omens of various 
kinds. Thus, to dream about teeth is held to be a 
warning that sorrow of some kind is at hand ; and 
it is even unluckier still to dream of one's teeth falling 
out. It is also frequently the custom, for the sake of 
luck, to throw a tooth when extracted into the fire, a 
practice which, as we have already seen, is frequently 
most scrupulously kept up in the case of young 
children, to make sure of the remainder of their teeth 
coming properly. Furthermore, to have teeth wide 
apart is a sign of prosperity, and is said to indicate 
one's future happiness in life. As an instance of this 
piece of folk-lore we may quote the following, 
narrated by a correspondent in Notes and Queries : — 
** A young lady the other day, in reply to an observa- 
tion of mine, * What a lucky girl you are ! ^ replied, 
* So they used to say I should be when at school' 
'Why]' * Because my teeth were set so far apart ; it 
was a sure sign I should be lucky and travel.'" 
Trivial as many of these superstitions may seem, 
yet they are interesting, inasmuch as they show how 
minutely the imagination has at different times 
surrounded the human body with countless items of 
odd notions, some of which in all probability origin- 
ated from practical experience, while others have been 
the result of a thousand circumstances, to ascertain 
the history of which would be a matter of long and 
elaborate research. 

Passing on to the hair, there is a popular notion that 



THE HUMAN BODY. 73 

sudden fright or violent distress will, to use Sir 
Walter Scott's words, *^ blanch at once the hair." 
Thus, in Shakespeare's /. Henry IV. (Act ii., sc. 4), 
FalstafF, in his speech to Prince Henry, says : — 

" Thy father's beard is turned white with the news." 

Although this has been styled " a whimsical notion," 
yet in its support various instances of its occurrence 
have been from time to time recorded. The hair of Lud- 
wig of Bavaria, for example, it is said, became almost 
suddenly white as snow on his learning the innocence 
of his wife, whom he had caused to be put to death 
on a suspicion of infidelity ; and the same thing, we are 
told, happened to Charles I. in a single night, when he 
attempted to escape from Carisbrooke Castle, A similar 
story is told of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, 
when her flight from France was checked at Yarennes. 
According to another notion, excessive fear has occa- 
sionally caused the hair to stand on end, a belief which 
Shakespeare has recorded. In Hamlet (Act iii., sc. 4), 
in that famous passage where the Queen is at a loss to 
understand her son's mysterious conduct and strange 
appearance, during his conversation with the ghost 
which is hidden to her eyes, she says : — 

" And, as the sleeping soldiers in th' alarm, 
Your bedded hair, like Hfe in excrements, 
Starts up, and stands on end." 

Once more, too, in that graphic scene in the Tempest 
(Act i., sc. 2), where Ariel describes the shipwreck, he 
says :-^ 



74 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

'^ All but mariners 
Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel, 
Then all afire ydth me ; the king's son, Ferdinand, 
With hair up -staring — then like reeds, not hair — 
Was the first man that leap'd." 

The sudden loss of hair is considered unlucky, being 
said to prognosticate the loss of children, health, or 
property; whereas many consider it imprudent to 
throw it away, or to leave the smallest scrap lying 
about. One reason assigned for this notion is that 
if hair is left about, birds might build their nests 
with it, a fatal thing for the person from whose head 
it has fallen. Thus, should a magpie use it for 
any such purpose — by no means an unlikely circum- 
stance — the person's death will be sure to happen 
"vdthin a year and a day." Some say, again, that 
hair should never be burnt, but only buried, a 
superstition founded on a tradition that at the resur- 
rection its owner will come in search of it. On the 
other hand, it is customary with some persons to 
throw a piece of their hair into the fire, drawing 
various omens from the way it burns. Should it 
gradually smoulder away, it is an omen of death ; 
but its burning brightly is a sign of longevity, and the 
brighter the flame the longer the life. In Devonshire, 
too, if the hair grows down on the forehead and 
retreats up the head above the temples, it is considered 
an indication that the person will have a long life. 
There is a very prevalent idea that persons who have 
much hair or down on their arms are, to quote the 
common expression, " born to be rich," although the 



THS HUMAIN BODY. 75 

exception, in this as in many otlier similar cases, 
rather proves the rule ; but abundance of hair on tlie 
head has been supposed to denote a lack of brains, 
from whence arose an odd proverb, ^'Bush natural, 
more hair than wit." Once more, Judas is said to 
have had red hair, and hence, from time immemorial, 
there has been a strong antipathy to it. Shakespeare, 
in As You Like It (Act iii., sc. 4), alludes to this 
beKef, when he makes Rosalind say of Orlando : — 

" His very hair is of the dissembling colour." 
To which Oelia replies : — 

" Something brov/ner than Judas's." 

It has been conjectured, however, that the odium 
attached to red hair took its origin in this country 
from the aversion felt to the red-haired Danes. One 
reason, perhaps, more than another why this dislike 
to it arose, originated in the circumstance that the 
colour was thought ugly and unfashionable, and the 
antipathy to it, therefore, would naturally be in- 
creased by this opinion. Thus, in course of time, a 
red beard was also held in contempt, and was regarded 
as an infallible token of a vile disposition. Yellow 
hair, too, was formerly esteemed a deformity, and in 
ancient tapestries both Cain and Judas are represented 
with yellow beards, in allusion to which, in the 
Merry Wives of Windsor (Act i., sc. 4), Simple, when 
interrogated, says of his master, " He hath but a little 
wee face, with a little yellow beard — a Cain-coloured 
beard." While alluding to beards, we may note that 
in former years they gave rise to various customs, 



76 DOMESTIC FOLK-LOKE. 

many of which, however, have long ago fallen into 
disuse. Thus, dyeing beards was a common practice, 
and our readers may recollect how Bottom, in A 
Midsummer NigMs Dream (Act i., sc. 2), is perplexed 
as to what beard he should wear in performing his 
part before the Duke. He says, '^ I will discharge 
it either in your straw-coloured beard, your orange- 
tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your 
French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow." It 
was evidently quite as much the habit for gentle- 
men to dye their beards in Shakespeare's day as it 
is said to be for ladies to dye their locks now-a-days. 
When beards, too, were the fashion, to mutilate or 
cut off one was considered an irreparable outrage. 

Pursuing our subject, we find that the cheek is 
not without its quota of folk-lore ; for, like the ear, 
nose, and eye, it is considered ominous when one's 
cheek itches. According to Grose, '' If the right 
cheek burns, some one is speaking to the person's 
advantage; if the left, to their disadvantage." One 
may still occasionally hear the following charm 
uttered by a person whose cheek suddenly burns : — 

" Eight cheek ! left cheek ! why do you bum ? 
Cursed he she that doth me any harm ; 
If she he a maid, let her he staid ; 
If she he a widow, long let her mourn ; 
But if it he my own true love — hum, cheek, hum." 

Again, the hand has been honoured with a very 
extensive folk-lore, and the following extract from an 
old writer shows that nearly every peculiarity of the 



THE HUMAN BODY. 77 

Land has been made emblematical of some personal 
trait of character. Thus, we are told: — "A great 
thick hand signifies one not only strong, but stout ; 
a little slender hand, one not only weak, but ti- 
morous ; a long hand and long fingers betoken a 
man not only apt for mechanical artifice, but liberally 
ingenious. Those short, on the contrary, note a fool, 
and fit for nothing ; a hard brawny hand signifies one 
dull and rude ; a soft hand, one witty, but efieminate ; 
a hairy hand, one luxurious. Long joints signify 
generosity ; yet, if they be thick withal, one not so 
ingenious. The often clapping and folding of the 
hands note covetousness ; and their much moving 
in speech, loquacity. Short and fat fingers mark a 
man out as intemperate and silly ; but long and 
lean, as witty. If his fingers crook upward, that 
shows him liberal; if downward, niggardly. Long 
nails and crooked signify one to be brutish, ravenous, 
and unchaste ; very short nails, pale and sharp, show 
him subtle and beguiling." Among other omens, we 
are told that the itching of the right hand signifies 
that it will shortly receive money, whereas if the left 
hand be the one to itch, it is a sign that money will 
before very many days have to be paid away. In 
Suffolk the peasants have the following rhyme on the 
subject: — 

" If your hand itches, 

You're going to take riches ; 

Rub it on wood, 

Sure to come good ; 

Eub it on iron, 

Sure to come flying ; 



78 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

Eub it on brass, 

Sure to come to pass ; 

Rub it on steel, 

Sure to come a deal ; 

Rub it on tin. 

Sure to come agin." 
A moist hand is said to denote an amorous consti- 
tution, and in 2 Henry IV, (Act i., sc. 2), the Lord 
Chief Justice enumerates a dry hand among the 
characteristics of age and debility. 

Palmistry, or divination by means of the hands, a 
species of fortune-telling still much practised, we have 
already described in another chapter. A superstition, 
hoYv^ever, which we must not omit to mention, is the 
practice of rubbing with a dead hand for the purpose 
of taking away disease, instances of which, even now-a- 
days, are of occasional occurrence. Mr. Henderson 
mentions a case that happened about the year 1853. 
The wife of a pitman at Castle Eden Colliery, who 
was suffering from a wen in the neck, went alone, 
according to advice given her by a ^'wise woman," 
and lay all night in the out-house, with the hand of a 
corpse on her wen. She had been assured that the 
hand of a suicide was an infallible cure. The shock, 
at any rate, to her nervous system from that terrible 
night was so great that she did not rally for some 
months, and eventually she died from the wen. 
As a further specimen of this incredible super- 
stition, we may quote the following case, which 
happened some years ago in an Eastern county. A 
little girl of about eight years of age had from birth 
been troubled with scrofulous disease, and had been 



THE HUMAN BODY. 79 

reared with great difficulty. Her friends consulted 
the ^'wise man" of the neighbourhood, who told 
tlie mother that if she took the girl and rubbed her 
naked body all over with the hand of a dead man she 
would be cured. The experiment was tried, and the 
poor little girl was nearly killed with fright, and, of 
course, made no progress whatever towards health. 

Many of our readers are, no doubt, acquainted 
with the famous " dead man's hand," which Vv^as 
formerly kept at Bryn Hall, in Lancashire. It is 
said to have been the hand of Father Arrowsmith, a 
priest y\^ho, according to some accounts, was put to 
death for his religion in the time of William III. 
Preserved with great care in a white silken bag, this 
hand was resorted to by many diseased persons, and 
wonderful cures are reported to have been effected by 
this saintly relic. Thus, we are told of a woman who, 
afflicted with the small-pox, had this dead . hand in 
bed with her every night for six weeks ; and of a poor 
lad who v/as rubbed with it for the cure of scrofulous 
sores. It is, indeed, generally supposed that practices 
of this kind are rare and of exceptional occurrence, 
but they are far more common than might be imagined, 
although not recorded in newspapers. This is, however, 
in a great measure owing to the fact that those who 
believe in and have recourse to such rites observe 
secresy, for fear of meeting with ridicule from others. 

The nails, also, as we have mentioned in our 
chapter on Childhood, have their folk-lore, the little 
specks which are seen on them being regarded as 
ominous. Many have their particular days for cut- 



80 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

ting the nails. Of the numerous rhymes on the 
subject, we may quote the following as a specimen, 
from which it will be seen that every day has its 

peculiar virtue : — 

^' Cut them on Monday, you cut them for health ; 
Cut them on Tuesday, you cut them for wealth ; 
Cut them on AVednesday, you cut them for news ; 
Cut them on Thursday, a new pair of shoes ; 
Cut them on Friday, you cut them for sorrow ; 
Cut them on Saturday, see your true love to-morrow ; 
Cut them on Sunday, the devil will be with you all the 
week." 

This old rhyming-saw differs in various localities, 
although in the main points it is the same; as by 
general consent both Friday and Sunday are regarded 
as most inauspicious days for cutting both the nails 
and hair. 

Once more, to sit cross-legged is said to produce 
good fortune ; and occasionally at a card-table one 
may find some superstitiously-inclined person sitting 
in this attitude with a view of securing good luck. 
Sir Thomas Browne, on the contrary, tells us that in 
days gone to "sit cross-legged, or with the fingers 
pectinated " or shut together, was accounted a sign of 
bad luck : a superstition alluded to by Pliny. 
Hef erring to the feet, we cannot do more than just 
allude to two or three items of folk-lore with which 
they are connected. Thus, a flat-footed person is 
generally considered to have a bad temper, a notion 
indeed which daily experience often proves to be 
incorrect. The itching of the foot has been supposed 
to indicate that its owner will shortly undertake 



ABTICLES OP DRESS. 81 

a strange journey; while that unpleasant sensation 
popularly styled " the foot going to sleep," is often 
charmed away by crossing the foot with saliva. 
When the division between the toes is incomplete, and 
they are partially joined, they are called ^'twin 
toes," and are said to bring good luck. This section 
of our ^-Domestic Folk-lore" might have been pro- 
longed to an almost indefinite extent had space per- 
mitted, but as the preceding pages amply bear wit- 
ness to the prevalence of such ideas, we will proceed 
to discuss another, and, it is to be hoped, not less 
interesting class of superstitions. 



CHAPTER VII. 



ARTICLES OF DRESS. 



New Clothes at Easter and "Whitsuntide — "Wearing of Clothes — 
The Clothes of the Dead — The Apron, Stockings, Garters, kc. 
—The Shoe— The Glove— The Ring— Pins. 

One would scarcely expect to find a host of odd 
fancies attached to such matter-of-fact necessities as 
articles of dress, but yet they hold a prominent place in 
our domestic folk-lore. However trivial at first sight 
these may seem, they are nevertheless interesting, in 
so far as they illustrate certain features of our social 
history, and show from another point of view how 
superstition is interwoven with all that appertains to 
human life. Beginning, then, with a well-known 

G 



82 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

piece of folk-lore, most persons wear new clothes on 
Easter-Day, mindful of the old admonition : — 

" At Easter let your clothes be new, 
Or else be sure you will it rue " 

— a notion that still retains its hold on the popular 
mind, few being found bold enough to transgress this 
long-rooted custom. In the North of England, so 
strong is the feeling on this point, that young people 
rarely omit visiting the nearest market-town prior to 
Eastertide^ to buy some new article of dress or 
personal ornament, as otherwise they believe the birds 
— notably rooks — will spoil their clothes. A similar 
fancy prevails with regard to Whitsuntide, and many 
would consider that they had forfeited their good 
luck for the next twelve months if they did not 
appear in " new things " on Whitsunday. 

The superstitions relating to clothes are very 
numerous, varying in different localities. Thus, 
according to a Suffolk notion, '' if you have your 
clothes mended on your back, you will be ill-spoken 
. of," or as they say in Sussex, '^ you will come to 
want." Again, many before putting on a new coat or 
dress, take care to place some money in the right-hand 
pocket, as this insures its always being full. If by 
mistake, however, the money is put in the left-hand 
pocket, then the person will never have a penny so 
long as the coat lasts. It is also a very prevalent 
belief that if one would secure luck with any article 
of dress, it must be worn for the first time at church. 
Equal attention, too, is paid by many to tlie way 



ARTICLES OF DRESS. 83 

tliey put on each article of dress — as, in case of its 
being accidentally inside out, it is considered an omen 
of success. It is necessary, however, if one wishes 
the omen to hold good, to wear the reversed portion 
of attire with the wrong side out till the regular time 
comes for taking it off. If reversed earlier, the luck 
is immediately lost. The idea of the "hind-side 
before" is so closely related to that of "inside out," 
that one can hardly understand their being taken 
for contrary omens ; yet, "It is worthy of remark, 
in connection with this superstition," says a corre- 
spondent of Chambers's " Book of Days," " that when 
William the Conqueror, in arming himself for the 
battle of Hastings, happened to put on his shirt of 
mail with the hind-side before, the bystanders seem to 
have been shocked by it, as by an ill-omen, till 
William claimed it as a good one, betokening that 
he was to be changed from a duke to a king." 
Another piece of superstition tells us that the clothes 
of the dead never last very long, but that as the body 
decays, so in the same degree do the garments and 
linen which belonged to the deceased. Hence, in 
Essex there is a popular saying to the effect that " the 
clothes of the dead always wear full of holes." When 
therefore a person dies, and the relatives, it may be_, 
give away the clothes to the poor, one may frequently 
hear a remark of this kind, " Ah, they may look very 
well, but they won't wear ; they belong to the dead." 
A similar belief prevails in Denmark, where a corpse 
is not allowed to be buried in the clothes of a living 
person, lest as the clothes rot in the grave, that person 



84 ^ DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

to whom they belonged should waste away and perish. 
In accordance also with a superstition prevalent in 
the Netherlands, the rings of a dead friend or relative 
are never give away, as it is a sure sign that the 
giver too will soon die. An absurd notion exists in 
many parts — one much credited by our country 
peasantry — that if a mother gives away all the baby's 
clothes in her possession, she will be sure to have 
another addition to her family, although the event 
may be contrary to all expectation. Among other 
items of folk-lore associated with clothes, we may 
mention that in the North of England to put a 
button or hook into the wrong hole while one is 
dressing in the morning, is held to be a warning that 
some misfortune will happen in the course of the day ; 
and in Northamptonshire it is said that servants who 
go to their places in black will never stay the year 
out. A Dorsetshire superstition is that if a gentle- 
man accidentally burns the tail of his coat, or a lady 
the hem of her skirt, during a visit at a friend's 
house, it is a proof they will repeat their visit. 

Another article of dress that has its superstitions 
is the apron, which some women turn before the new 
moon, to insure good luck for the ensuing month. In 
Yorkshire, when a married woman's apron falls off, it 
is a sign that something is coming to vex her ; when, 
however, the apron of an unmarried girl drops down, 
she is frequently the object of laughter, as there is 
considered no surer sign than that she is thinking 
about her sweetheart. Again, if a young woman's 
petticoats are longer than her di^ss, this is a proof 



ARTICLES OF DRESS. 85 

that her mother does not love her so much as her 
father, a notion which extends as far as Scotland. 
This piece of folk-lore may have originated in the 
mother not attending so much to the child's dress 
as was her duty, whereas, however much the father 
may love his child, he may at the same time be 
perfectly ignorant of the rights and wrongs of female 
attire : an excuse which does not hold good in 
the case of the mother. Some of the descriptions 
of plants in use among the rural peasantry refer to 
the petticoat. Thus, the poppy is said to have a red 
petticoat and a green gown ; the daffodil, a yellow 
petticoat and green gown, and so on ) these fancies 
being the subject of many of our old nursery rhymes, 
as, for instance : — 

" Daffadown-dilly is come up to town, 
In a yellow petticoat and a green gown." 

Passing on in the next place to stockings, it is 
lucky, as with other articles of dress, to put one 
wrong-side out, but unlucky to turn it on discovering 
one's mistake. Some, too, consider it a matter of 
importance as to which foot they put the stocking 
on first when dressing themselves in the morn- 
ing — the luck of the day being supposed in a great 
measure to depend on this circumstance — as to 
clothe the left foot before the right one is a sign of 
misfortune. "Flinging the stocking" was an old 
marriage custom, being really a kind of divination, 
which Misson, in his '' Travels through England," 
thus describes : — ^'The young men, it seems, took the 



86 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

"bride's stockings, and t/ie girls those of tlie bride- 
groom, each of whom, sitting at the foot of the bed, 
threw the stocking over their heads, endeavouring to 
make it fall upon that of the bride or her spouse ; 
if the bridegroom's stocking, thrown by the girls, 
fell upon the bridegroom's head, it was a sign that 
they themselves would soon be married ; and similar 
luck was derived from the falling of the bride's 
stockings, thrown by the young men." 

There is a superstitious notion in some places that 
Vvdien the bride retires to rest on her wedding-night, 
her bridesmaids should lay her stockings across, as 
this act is supposed to guarantee her future prosperity 
in the marriage state. Another use to which the 
stocking has been put is its being hung up to receive 
presents at Christmas-time, a custom which, as Mr. 
Henderson points out, the Pilgrim Fathers carried to 
America, and bequeathed to their descendants. 

It is curious to find even the garter an object of 
superstition, being employed by young women in their 
love divinations on Midsummer Eve, a period, it must 
be remembered, considered most propitious for such 
ceremonies. Their mode of procedure is this : — The 
maiden anxious to have a peep of her future husband 
must sleep in a county different from that in which 
she usually resides, and on going to bed must take 
care to knit the left garter about the right stocking, 
lepeating the following incantation, and at every 
pause knitting a knot : — 

'' This knot I knit 
To know the thing I know not yet; 



ARTICLES OF DRESS. 87 

That I may see 
The man that shall my hushand be ; 
How he goes, and what he wears, 
And what he does all days and years." 

On retiring to rest the wishecl-for one will appear 
in her dreams, wearing the insignia of his trade or 
profession. 

Again, as a popular object of superstition the 
shoe is unrivalled, and antiquaries are still undecided 
as to why our forefathers invested this matter-of-fact 
article of dress with such mysterious qualities, select- 
ing it as the symbol of good fortune, one of the well- 
known uses in which it has been employed being the 
throwing of it for luck, constant allusions to which 
practice occur in our old writers. Thus, Beaumont 
and -Fletcher, in TliQ Honest MarCs Fortune^ refer 
to it : — 

" Captain, your shoes are old ; pray put 'em off, 
And let one fling 'em after us." 

And Ben Jonson, in his Masque of the Gipsies^ repre- 
sents one of the gipsies as saying ; — 

" Hurle after an old shoe, 
I'll be merry whate'er I doe." 

This custom, which was once so prevalent, has not yet 
died out, for in Norfolk, whenever servants are going 
after new situations, a shoe is thrown after them, 
with the wish that they may succeed in what they are 
going about. Some years ago, when vessels engaged 
in the Greenland whale fishery left Whitby, in York- 
shire, the wives and friends of the sailors threw old 
shoes at the ships as they passed the pier-head. 



88 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

Indeed, this practice is frequently observed in towns 
on the sea-coast, and a correspondent of Notes and 
Queries informs us that one day, when at Swansea, 
he received a shoe on his shoulder which was intended 
for a young sailor leaving his home to embark upon a 
ti-ading voyage. Tennyson has not omitted to speak 
of this piece of superstition : — 

*' For this thou shalt from all things seek 
Marrow of mirth and laughter ; 
And wheresoe'er thou move, good luck 
Shall throw her old shoe after." 

As an emblem of good luck, the shoe is thrown with 
much enthusiasm after a bridal couple. Yarious ex- 
planations have been given of this popular custom. 
Some think that it was originally intended as a sham 
assault on the bridegroom for carrying off the bride ; 
and hence a survival of the old ceremony of opposition 
to the capture of a bride. Others again are of 
opinion that the shoe was in former times a symbol of 
the exercise of dominion and authority over her by 
her father or guardian ; the receipt of the shoe by the 
bridegroom, even if accidental, being an omen that the 
authority was transferred to him. Thus, in the Bible, 
the receiving of a shoe was an evidence and symbol of 
asserting or accepting dominion or ownership ; where- 
as the giving back of the shoe was the symbol of resign- 
ing it. Another reason for throwing the shoe is given 
in the following old rhyme : — 

*' When Britons bold 
Wedded of old, 
Sandals were backward thrown, 



ARTICLES OF DRESS. 89 

The pair to tell 
That, ill or well, 
The act was all their own." 

Throwing the shoe after the wedded pair was, also, 
no doubt intended as an augury of long life to 
the bride. In Yorkshire the ceremony of shoe-throw- 
ing is termed " thrashing," and the older the shoe 
the greater the luck ; and in some parts of Kent the 
mode of procedure is somewhat peculiar. After the 
departure of the bride and bridegroom the single 
ladies are drawn up in one row, and the bachelors 
in another. When thus arranged, an old shoe is 
thrown as far as possible, which the fair sex run for : 
the winner being considered to have the best chance 
of marriage. She then throws the shoe at the gentle- 
men, when the first who gets it is believed to have 
the same chance of matrimony. A somewhat similar 
custom prevails in Germany, where the bride's shoe 
is thrown among the guests at the wedding, the person 
who succeeds in catching it being supposed to have 
every prospect of a speedy marriage. 

Many auguries are still gathered from the shoe. 
Thus young girls on going to bed at night place their 
shoes at right angles to one another, in the form of 
the letter T, repeating this rhyme : — 

" Hoping this night my true love to see, 
I place my shoes in the form of a T." 

As in the case of the stocking, great importance is 
attached by many superstitious persons as to which 
shoe they put on first, in allusion to which Butler, in 
his '^Hudibras," says : — 



90 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

" Augustus, having b' oversight 
Put on his left shoe 'fore his right, 
Had like to have been slain that day 
By soldiers mutin'ing for pay." 

An old writer speaking of Je^yisll customs tells us 
that "some of tliem observe, in dressing themselves 
in the morning, to put on the right stocking and right 
shoe first without tying it. Then afterwards to put 
on the left shoe, and so return to the right; that 
so they may begin and end with the right one, 
which they account to be the most fortunate. '^ A 
Suffolk doggrel respecting the "wear of shoes" teaches 
us the following : — 

*' Tip at the toe : live to see woe; 
Wear at the side : live to be a bride ; 
Wear at the ball : live to spend all ; 
Wear at the heel : live to save a deal." 

Among some of the many charms in which the shoe 
has been found efficacious, may be mentioned one 
practised in the Korth of England, where the peasantry, 
to cure cramp, are in the habit of hiying their shoes 
across to avert it. Mrs. Latham^ in her "West Sussex 
Superstitions/' published in the " Folk-lore Record,'' 
tells us of an old woman who was at a complete 
loss to understand why her " rheumatics was so un- 
common bad, for she had put her shoes in the form 
of a cross every night by the side of her head, ever 
since she felt the first twinge." In the same county, 
a cure for ague consists in wearing a leaf of tansy in 
the shoe. 

It is curious that the shoe should have entered into 



ARTICLES OF DRESS. 91 

tlie superstitions associated with death. According to 
an Aryan tradition, the greater part of the way from 
the land of the living to that of death lay through 
morasses, and vast moors overgrown with furze and 
thorns. That the dead might not pass over them 
barefoot, a pair of shoes was laid with them in the 
grave. Hence a funeral is still called in the Hemie- 
berg district " dead-shoe," and in Scandinavia the shoe 
itself is known as '' hel-shoe." There are countless 
other items of folk-lore connected with the shoe : 
thus in days gone by the phrase, " Over shoes, over 
boots '^ was equivalent to the popular phrase, ^' In for 
a penny, in for a pound," an allusion to which we find 
in Taylor's " Workes" (1630) :— 

*' Where true courage roots, 
The proverb says, once over shoes, o'er boots. " 

Again, "to stand in another man's shoe " is a popular 
expression for occupying the place or laying claim to 
the honours of another. " Looking for dead men's 
shoes " is still an every-day phrase denoting those who 
are continually expecting some advantage which will 
accrue to them on the death of another. The shoe- 
horn, too, from its convenient use in drawing on a 
tight shoe, was formerly applied in a jocular meta- 
phor to subservient and tractable assistants. Thus, 
for instance, Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida 
(Act v., sc. 1) makes Thersites in his railing mood 
give this name to Menelaus, whom he calls '^ a thrifty 
shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother's 
(Agamemnon's) leg." It was also employed as a 
contemptuous phrase for danglers after young women. 



92 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORK 

A further article of dress that has had much 
honour conferred upon it is the glove, holding as it 
does a conspicuous place in many of our old customs 
and ceremonies. Thus in days gone by it was given, 
by way of delivery or investiture, in sales or con- 
veyances of lands and goods. It was also employed 
as the token of a challenge to fight, a symbolical 
staking, perhaps of the prowess of the hand to which 
the glove belonged. Hence to hang up a glove in 
church was a public challenge, very much as a notice 
affixed to a church-door is a public notice. Apropos 
of this custom, a story is given in the life of the Rev. 
Bernard Gilpin, of the diocese of Durham, who died 
in 1583. It appears that he observed a glove hanging 
high up in his church, and ascertaining that it was 
designed as a challenge to any]one who should dare to 
displace it, he desired his sexton to do so. " Not I, 
sir, I dare do no such thing, '^ he replied. Whereupon 
the parson called for a long staff, and taking it down 
himself, put it in his pocket. Preaching afterwards 
on the subject, he denounced this unseemly practice, 
saying, '^ Behold, I have taken it down myself," and 
producing the glove, he exhibited it to the whole 
congregation as a spectacle of honour. This custom, 
we are told, does not appear to have been much 
older in this country than the thirteenth century, for 
Matthew Paris, in writing of the year 1245, speaks 
of it expressly as French. Noblemen wore their ladies' 
gloves in front of their hats, a practice mentioned by 
Drayton as having been in vogue at the battle of 
Agincourt :— 



ARTICLES OF DRESS. 93 

" The noble youth, the common rank above, 
On their courveting coursers mounted fair, 
One wore his mistress' garter, one her glove, 
And he her colours whom he most did love ; 

There was not one but did some favour wear ; 
Ajid each one took it on his happy speed, 
To make it famous by some knightly deed." 

The gift of a pair of gloves was at one time the 
ordinary perquisite of those who performed some small 
service ; and in process of time, to make the reward 
of greater value, the glove was ^' lined " with money ; 
hence the term "glove-money." Kelics of the old 
custom still survive in the presentation of gloves to 
those who attend weddings and funerals. It is 
difficult, however, to discover the connection between 
gloves and a stolen kiss. Our readers, for example, 
may recollect how, in Sir Walter Scott's " Fair Maid 
of Perth," Catharine steals from her chamber on 
St. Valentine's morn, and catching Henry Smith 
asleep, gives him a kiss ; then we have the follow- 
ing : — " Come into the booth with me, my son, and I 
will furnish thee with a fitting theme. Thou knowest 
the maiden who ventures to kiss a sleeping man, wins 
of him a pair of gloves." Gloves are still given to 
a judge at a maiden assize, a custom which, it has 
been suggested, originated in a Saxon law, which 
forbade the judges to wear gloves while sitting on the 
Bench. Hence, to give a pair of gloves to a judge 
was tantamount to saying that he need not trouble 
to come to the Bench, but might wear gloves. Again, 
in bygone times gloves were worn as a mark of 
distinction by sovereigns, ecclesiastical dignitaries, 



94 DOMESTIC FOLK-LOIIE. 

and otliers ; their workmanship being excessively 
costly, richly embroidered as they were and deco- 
rated with jewels. " The association of gloves with 
ecclesiastical dignity survived/^ says Mr. Leadam 
in the Antiquary^ '^ the Reformation in England ; 
for although they ceased to be worn in the ser- 
vices of the Church, yet as late as the reign of 
Charles II. bishops upon their consecration were 
accustomed to present gloves to the archbishop, and 
to all who came to their consecration banquet. The 
lavender gloves with golden fringes which do often 
adorn their portraits, may still remind our modern 
prelates of the ancient glories of their predecessors." 
It was also customary to hang a pair of white gloves 
on the pews of unmarried villagers who had died in 
the flower of their youth, and at several towns in 
England it has been customary from time immemorial 
to announce a fair by hoisting a huge glove upon a 
pole — a practice v/hich exists at Macclesfield, Ports- 
mouth, Southampton, and Chester ; the glove being 
taken down at the conclusion of the fair. Hone, 
in his description of Exeter Lammas Fair, says : — 
" The charter for this fair is perpetuated by a glove 
of immense size, stuffed and carried through the city 
on a very long pole, decorated with ribbons, flowers, &c.j 
and attended with music, parish beadles, and the nobi- 
lity. It is afterwards placed on the top of the Guild- 
hall, and then the fair commences ; on the taking 
down of the glove the fair terminates." Mr. Leadam 
also quotes a passage from the *' Speculum Saxonicum " 
which throws lierlit on the origin of this custom : — 



ARTICLES OF DRESS. 95 

" No one is allowed to set up a market or a mint, 
without the consent of the ordinary or judge of that 
place ; the king ought also to send a glove a.s a sign 
of his consent to the same." The glove, therefore, 
Avas the king's glove, the earliest form of royal charter, 
the original sign-manual. Among other items of folk- 
lore connected with this useful article of dress, we may 
mention that the term " right as my glove " is a phrase, 
according to Sir Walter Scott, derived from the prac- 
tice of pledging the glove as the sign of irrefragable 
faith. Gloves, too, were in olden times fashionable new 
year's gifts, having been far more expensive than now- 
a-days. When Sir Thomas More was Lord Chancellor, 
he happened to determine a case in favour of a huly 
named Croaker, who, as a mark of her gratitude, 
sent him a new year's gift in the shape of a pair 
of gloves with forty angels in them. But Sir Thomas 
returned the money \vith the following letter: — 
** Mistress, since it were against good manners to 
refuse your new year's gift, I am content to take 
your ^doves, but as for the lining I utterly refuse 
it." Ill the time of Queen Elizabeth, the rural bride- 
groom wore gloves in his hat as a sign of good 
husbandry; and on the ^'Border" to bite the glove 
was considered a pledge of deadly vengeance, in allu- 
sion to which Sir Walter Scott, in his ' ' Lay of the 
Last Minstrel," says : — 

" Stern Rutherford right little said, 
But bit his glove and shook his head." 

The ring, apart from its eventful history, has from 
the most remote period been surrounded, both in this 



96 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

and other countries, not only with a most extensive 
legendary lore, but with a vast array of superstitions, 
a detailed account of which would be impossible in a 
small volume like the present one ; so we must confine 
ourselves to some of the most popular. 

In the first place, then, certain mysterious virtues 
have been supposed to reside in rings, not so much 
on account of their shape as from the materials of 
which they have been composed. Thus, they have 
been much worn as talismans or charms, being thought 
to be infallible preservatives against unseen dangers of 
every kind. Referring to some of these, we find, for 
instance, that the turquoise ring was believed to 
possess special properties, a superstition to which Dr. 
Donne alludes : — 

" A compassionate tiu-quoise, that doth tell, 
By looking pale, the wearer is not well." 

Fenton, too, in his " Secret Wonders of N:' ture,'* 
describes the stone : — ^^ The turkeys doth move when 
there is any peril prepared to him that weareth if 
The turquoise ring of Shylock, which, we are ^old in 
the Merchant of Venice (Act iii., sc. 1), he would not 
part with for a "wilderness of monkeys," was, no 
doubt, valued for its secret virtues. 

The carbuncle, again, amongst other properties, was 
said to give out a natural light, to which it has been 
supposed Shakespeare alludes in Titus Andronicus 
(Actii., sc. 3), where, speaking of the ring on the finger 
of Bassianus, he says : — • 

" Upon his bloody finger he doth wear 
A precious ring, that lightens all the hole, 



ARTICLES OF DRESS. 97 

Which, like a taper in some monument, 

Doth shine upon the dead man's earthy cheeks, 

And shows the ragged entrails of the pit." 

A piece of popular superstition makes it unlucky 
to wear an opal ring, although this lovely stone has 
always been an object of peculiar admiration from the 
beautiful variety of colours which it displays, and in the 
Middle Ages was even thought to possess the united 
virtues of all the gems with whose distinctive colours 
it was emblazoned. The diamond was believed to coun- 
teract poison, a notion which prevailed to a compara- 
tively late period; though, according to another belief, 
it was considered the most dangerous of poisons, and as 
such we find it enumerated among the poisons admi- 
nistered to Sir Thomas Overbury, when a prisoner in 
the Tower. An emerald ring was thought to insure 
purity of thought ; and a toadstone ring was worn as 
an amulet to preserve new-born children and their 
mothers from fairies. 

Among the omens associated with rings, we may 
briefly note that to lose a ring which has been given 
as a pledge of affection is unlucky ; as also is the 
breaking of a ring on the finger j while further super- 
stitions relating to the wedding-ring have been noticed 
at length in our chapter on marriage. In days 
gone by, too, " medicated rings " were held in great 
repute, and were much used for the cure of diseases, 
instances of which we find among the remedies still 
in use for cramp, epilepsy, and fits. Silver seems to 
have been considered highly efficacious ; and rings ■ 
made of lead, mixed with quicksilver, were worn as 

H 



98 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

charms against headaches and other complaints. 
Dactylomancy, or divination by rings, is not quite 
forgotten among eager aspirants after matrimony, one 
mode being to suspend a ring by a thread or hair 
within a glass tumbler, notice being taken as to how 
many times it strikes the sides of the glass without 
being touched. Once more, there is an old piece of folk 
lore on the colours of stones in " keepsake rings " : — 

" Oh, green is forsaken, 
And yellow is forsworn, 
But blue is the prettiest colour that's worn." 

Passing from the ring to another article of dress — 
perhaps the most insignificant — namely, the pin, we 
nevertheless find it invested with all kinds of curious 
superstitions. Thus, it is said that on seeing a pin, 
one should always pick it up for the sake of good 
luck, as those who omit to do so run into imminent 
danger of being overtaken by misfortune, a notion 
embodied in the following rhyme : — • 

** See a pin and pick it up, 
All the day you'll have good luck ; 
See a pin and let it He, 
All the day you'll have to cry." 

Why, however. North-country people are so per- 
sistent in their refusal to give one another a pin, it is 
not easy to discover. When asked for a jnn, they 
invariably reply, ^^ You may take one ; but, mind, I do 
not give it." One of the most popular species of 
enchantment to which pins have been applied is that 
sometimes emjDloyed in counteracting the evil efiects 
of witchcraft. One mode is by ^* pin-sticking," a case 



ARTICLES OF DRESS. 99 

of which recently occurred in the parish of Honiton 
Ciyst, in Devonshire. A landlord having lost one of hirj 
tenants, certain repairs and improvements were found 
necessary to prepare for the next. In carrying out 
the work a chimney had to be explored, when, in 
the course of the operation, there was found carefully 
secreted a pig's heart stuck all over with thin prickles, 
evidently a substitute for pins. This is supposed to 
have been done by the direction of some " wise " or 
cunning person, as a means of taking revenge on the 
witch to whose incantations the party considered some 
mischief due, in the belief that the heart of the ill- 
wisher would be pierced in like manner, until it 
eventually became as pulseless as that of the pig. 

It appears, too, that pins were largely used in a 
particular species of sorcery. Whenever, for instance, 
some malevolent individual wished to carry out her 
ill-natured designs, she made a clay image of the 
person she intended to harm, baptised the said image 
with the name of the party whom it was meant to 
represent, and stuck it full of pins or burnt it. 
Where the pins were placed the person whom it repre- 
sented was afflicted wdth pain, and as the figure 
wasted, so he was said to waste away. Shakespeare 
alludes to this superstition, and in Richard III, (Act 
iii., sc. 4) makes the Duke of Gloucester say to 
Hastings : — 

" Then be your eyes the witness of this ill, 
See how I am bewitch' d ; behold, mine arm 
Is, like a blasted sapling, withered up ! 
And this is Edward's wife, that monstrous witch 

tOFC. 



100 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

Consorted with that harlot strumpet Shore, 
That by their witchcraft thus have marked me.** 

Pins, too, have been in extensive demand for 
divination, and here and there throughout the 
country we find ** wishing wells," into which if the 
passers-by only drop a crooked pin and breathe their 
wish, it is said they may rest assured of its fulfilment 
at some future date. 

So much, then, for our illustrations of the folk-lore 
of dress, a subject wliicli, interesting though it is, we 
have now discussed at sufiicient length. 



CHAPTER YIII. 

TABLE SUPERSTITIONS. 

Thirteen at Table— Salt-spilling— The Knife— Bread, and other 
Articles of Food — Wishing Bones — Tea-leaves — Singing before 
Breakfast — Shaking Hands across the Table. 

It is frequently found that even strong-minded persons 
are not exempt from the prejudice against sitting 
down to dinner when there are only thirteen present. 
Many amusing anecdotes are recorded of the devices 
resorted to for avoiding the consequences supposed 
to be incurred by the neglect of this superstition — 
the notion being that one of the thirteen, generally 
the youngest, wdll die within the next twelve montlis. 
To avoid, therefore, any such contingency, many 
persons, should they be disappointed in one of their 



TABLE SUPERSTITIONS. 101 

guests, have the empty place filled by a child, and 
should one not always be forthcoming, no slight incon- 
venience is occasionally produced. ISTot very long ago 
a case was recorded in which a lady, not being able at 
the last moment to make up the number fourteen, had 
her favourite cat seated at the table, hoping thereby 
to break the fatal spell attaching to the unlucky 
number thirteen. 

The origin popularly assigned to this widespread 
superstition is the fact that thirteen was the number 
at the Last Supper, Judas being the thirteenth. A 
correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine^ however, 
writing at the close of the last century, says that it is 
" founded on the calculations adhered to by the 
insurance offices, which presume that out of thirteen 
persons, taken indiscriminately, one will die within 
a year." But this is not the probable origin, that 
which connects it with the Last Supper being no 
doubt the correct one. Some, says Lord Lyttelton, in 
Notes and Queries^ have carried the superstition ^'to 
the extent of disliking the number thirteen at all 
times ; but the commoner form limits it to Friday — 
not that there is any ground for fact in this, for the 
Last Supper was on the fifth, not the sixth day of 
the week. Sailors are held somewhat superstitious, 
and I knew an eminent naval officer who actually 
would walk out of the room when the conjunction 
happened on a Friday, after the death of the wife and 
eldest daughter, both of which events were preceded 
by the said conjunction." Among other instances of 
this piece of superstition, we may quote the following, 



102 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

related by Addison in tlie Spectator : — " I remember," 
he says, " I was one in a mixed assembly that was 
full of wine and mirth, when on a sudden an old 
woman unluckily observed that there were thirteen of 
us in company. This remark struck a panic terror 
into several who were present, insomuch that one or 
two of the ladies were going to leave the room ; but 
a friend of mine, taking notice that one of our female 
companions was likely to become a mother, affirmed 
there were fourteen in the room, and that instead 
of portending that one in the company should die, 
it plainly foretold that one of them should be born. 
Had not my friend found this expedient to break the 
omen, I question not but half the women in the com- 
pany should have fallen sick that very night." Again, 
we may give another anecdote recorded by Rachel, the 
celebrated tragedienne. On her return from Egypt, 
in the spring of 1857, she installed herself in a villa 
in the neighbourhood of Montpellier. There she re- 
ceived a visit from the poet Ponsard and Arsene 
Houssaye, the latter of whom was making a tour as 
inspector of the Departmental Museums. " Do you 
recollect the dinner we had at the house of Victor 
Hugo, at the close of the repetition of L'Angelo ? '' she 
said to the former. " You remember there were thirteen 
of us. There was Hugo and his wife, you and your 
wife, Rebecca and I, Girardin and his wife, and some 
others. Well ! where to-day are the thirteen ] Victor 
Hugo and his wife are in Jersey ; your wife is dead ; 
Madame de Girardin is dead ; my poor Rebecca is 
dead ; Gerard de Nerval, Oradie, Alfred de Musset 



TABLE SUPERSTITIONS. 103 

are dead. I — say no more. There remain but 
Girardin and you. Adieu ! my friends. Never laugh 
at thirteen at a table ! " Anecdotes, indeed, relating 
to this superstition are without number, and form 
many an amusing episode in the lives of noted charac- 
ters. It may be mentioned here that the number 
thirteen is considered ominous in other ways. Fuller, 
by way of example, tells us how a covetous courtier 
complained to King Edward YI. tt-at Christ College, 
Cambridge, was a superstitious foundation, consisting 
of a master and twelve fellows, in imitation of 
Christ and His twelve Apostles. He, therefore, ad- 
vised the king to take away one or two fellowships, 
so as to dissolve that unlucky number. " Oh, no," 
replied the king, ^* I have a better way than that 
to mar their conceit ; I will add a thirteenth fellowship 
to them," which he accordingly did. 

Another equally popular superstition is the ill-luck 
supposed to attach to salt-spilling : one notion being 
that to upset the salt-cellar while in the act of hand- 
ing it to any one is a sign of an impending quarrel 
between the parties. It is also said to indicate sorrow 
or trouble to the person spilling it, and to counteract 
the evil consequences of this unlucky act one should 
fling some salt over the shoulder. Gay speaks of this 
popular fancy in the fable of the " Farmer's Wife 
and the Raven " : — 

" The salt was spilt, to mc it fell, 
Then to contribute to my loss, 
My knife and fork were laid across." 

Indeed constant allusions are found to this wide- 



104 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

spread superstition both in our old and modern 
writers. Gayton, describing two friends, says : — 

" I have two friends of either sex, which do 
Eat little salt, or none, yet are friends too, 
Of both which persons I can truly tell, 
They are of patience most invincible 
Whom out of temper no mischance at all 
Can put — no, if towards them the salt should faU.* 

This piece of folk-lore dates back up to the time 
of the Komans, and at the present day is not limited 
to our own country. It has been suggested that it 
tnay have originated from the circumstance that salt 
was formerly used in sacrifices, and that to spill it 
when once placed on the head of the \dctim was 
regarded as a bad omen. Bailey, however, assigns 
a very different reason, telling us that salt was 
considered by the ancients incorruptible, and on this 
account was made the symbol of friendship. If it, 
therefore, was spilt, the persons between whom it 
happened thought their friendship would not be of 
long duration. 

Some people dislike even so much as to put salt 
on another person's plate, considering this act 
equivalent to wishing one's neighbour misfortune. 
Hence there is a well-known couplet : — 

" Help me to salt. 
Help me to sorrow." 

A correspondent of Notes and Queries relates how 
one day he offered to help an old Highland lady at 
dinner to some salt from the cellar, which stood much 
nearer to him than to her ; when she gravely put 



TABLE SUPERSTITIONS. 105 

back his hand, and drew away her plate, saying at 
the same time, with a kind of shudder, between her 
teeth, ^^ Help me to' salt, help me to sorrow." The 
ill-luck may be averted by a second help. Salt has 
also been considered a powerful safeguard against 
evil spirits ; and in Scotland it was once customary in 
brewing to throw a handful of salt on the top of the 
mash to ward off witches. Again, as an interesting 
illustration of the change which has passed over our 
domestic manners, we may quote the phrase '^ to sit 
above the salt," that is, in a place of honour, where- 
by a marked and invidious distinction was formerly 
maintained among those at the same table. A large 
salt-cellar was usually placed about the middle of a 
long table, the places above which were assigned to 
the guests of distinction, those below to inferiors and 
poor relations. It argues little for the delicacy of our 
ancestors that they should have permitted such 
ill-natured distinctions at their board ; often, as it has 
been said, placing their guests '' below the salt " for 
no better purpose than that of mortifying them. 
Hence Ben Jonson, speaking of the characteristics of 
an insolent coxcomb, says : — "His fashion is not to 
take knowledge of him that is beneath him in clothes. 
He never drinks below the salt." 

Among the many other odd items of folk-lore 
associated with the table, we may mention in the 
next place those relating to the knife. Thus, to let a 
knife drop is a sign that a visitor is coming to the 
house : and to lay the knife and fork crosswise on 
one's plate is an omen that crosses and troubles will 



106 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

soon occur. Equally unlucky, too, is it to give any 
kind of knife away, for, as Gay in his " Shepherd's 
Week " says : — 

*' But woe is me ! such presents luckless prove, 
For knives, they tell me, always sever love,*' 

Indeed, this superstition is not confined to a knife, 
but extends to any sharp or cutting instrument, such 
as a pair of scissors, a razor, &c. To avoid the 
danger of such a misfortune, some trifling recompense 
must be made in return. This superstition was con- 
futed by a versifier of the last century — the Rev. 
Samuel Bishop — who presented a knife to his wife on 
her fifteenth wedding-day, with a copy of some very 
clever verses of which the following are a specimen : — 

" A knife, dear girl, cuts love, they say, 
Mere modish love perhaps it may ; 
For any tool of any kind 
Can separate what was never joined; 
The knife that cuts our love in two 
\Yill have much tougher work to do ; 
Must cut your softness, worth, and spirit, 
Down to the vulgar size of merit,'' &c. 

Some consider it unlucky to find a knife, from a 
notion that it will bring ill-luck to them ; while 
others again often place a knife near a sleeping child 
as a charm to preserve it from danger, a belief to 
which Herrick thus refers : — 

" Let the superstitious wife 
Near the child's heart lay a knife ; 
Point be up, and haft be down ; 
While she gossips ia the town. 



TABLE SUPERSTITIONS. 107 

This 'mongst other mystic charms 
Keeps the sleeping child from harms." 

Even the loaf of bread, too, without which the most 
frugal board would be incomplete, has not escaped 
without its quota of folk-lore. Thus, many a house- 
wife still marks the sign of the cross upon her loaf 
before placing it in the oven, just as the Durham 
butcher does to the shoulder of a sheep or lamb after 
taking off the skin — the notion probably being to 
protect it against the injurious influence of witchcraft. 
In many parts of Scotland peasants were formerly in 
the habit of making a cross on their tools, considering 
that by so doing they would be rendered safe against 
the mischievous pranks of the fairy folks as they 
went on their midnight errands. Again, if a loaf 
accidentally parts in the hand while an unmarried 
lady is cutting it, this either prognosticates that she 
will not be married during the next twelve months, 
or, what is still worse, that there will be a dissension 
of some kind in the family. Some, too, have a super- 
stitious objection to turning a loaf upside-down after 
cutting it. Herrick refers to the custom of carryiu 
a crust of bread in the pocket for luck's sake — a 
practice which is not quite obsolete : — 

*' If ye fear to be affrighted 
When ye are, by chance, benighted ; 
In your pocket for a trust 
Carry nothing but a crust, 
For that holy piece of bread 
Charms the danger and the dread." 

While speaking of bread it may not be inappro- 



o 



108 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

priate to refer to a few other articles of fare around 
which superstition has cast its mantle. Thus, eggs 
have an extensive folk-lore both in this and other 
countries. Many persons, for instance, after eating 
an egg take special care to crush the shell ; the 
omission of this ceremony, as they fancy, being 
attended with ill-luck. Sir Thomas Browne informs 
us that the real reason is to prevent witchcraft : 
*' lest witches should draw or prick their names 
therein, and veneficiously mischief their person, 
they broke the shell." It is also considered a bad 
omen to bring eggs into the house after dark, 
and many persons avoid burning egg-shells lest the 
hens should cease to lay. According to a superstition 
current in the West of England, one should always 
make a hole through an egg-shell before throwing it 
away, as, unless this is done, there is a danger of 
witches using them to put to sea for the purpose 
of wrecking ships. Beaumont and Fletcher in their 
*' Women Pleased " allude to this notion : — 

*' The devil should think of purchasing that egg-shell 
To victual out a witch for the Burmoothies." 

Just as it is considered, too, unlucky to bring eggs 
into the house after dark, so the same prejudice exists 
with regard to taking them out. One day, we are 
told in the Stamford Mercury (Oct. 29, 1852), a 
person in want of some eggs called at a farmhouse 
and inquired of the good woman whether she had 
any eggs to sell, to which she replied that she had a 
few scores to dispose of. '' Then 111 take them home 



TABLE SUPERSTITIONS. 109 

with me in the cart," was his answer, to which 
she somewhat indignantly replied, " That you will 
not j don't you know the sun has gone down 1 
You are welcome to the eggs at a proper hour 
of the day, but I would not let them go out of the 
house after the sun is set on any consideration 
whatever." A Norfolk superstition warns persons 
against eating the marrow of pork lest they should 
go mad ; and, in the North of England, we are 
told that should the meat for dinner shrink in the 
pot, it presages a downfall in life. Should it swell, 
on the contrary, to a large size, it denotes that the 
head of the family will be prosperous in his under- 
takings. These odd fancies vary in different localities, 
and in out-of-the-way districts where the railway 
has not yet penetrated, they still retain their hold on 
the primitive and uncultivated minds of our agricul- 
tural peasantry. At the same time, however, occa- 
sional survivals of many of these old worn-out 
superstitions crop up in unexpected quarters, showing 
they are not completely dead. Thus, our children 
still practise their divination by means of the ^Svishing 
bone " of a fowl, and are, moreover, ever on the alert 
to discover, what they consider, infallible omens from 
any article of food which nursery tradition has stamped 
as possessing such remarkable qualities. As we have 
already pointed out in another chapter, tea-leaves 
often afford to both old and young a constant source 
of amusement ; and we may, now and then, find 
some elderly damsel, who still aspires to enter one 
day on the marriage state, taking care to put the 



110 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORR. 

milk into her tea before tlie sugar lest she should 
lose her chance of securing a sweetheart. Mrs. Latham, 
too, tells us how matrimonial fortunes are often 
told by seers at home from the grounds or sediment 
remaining at the bottom of a tea-cup ; and where to 
unenlightened eyes nothing is apparent but a little 
black dust floating in a slop, those who have the wit 
to do so may discern a hidden meaning. Again, 
among the host of small superstitions connected with 
our daily meals, one at the very outset relates to 
breakfast ; there being a v/idespread belief that if a 
person sings before breakfast, he will cry before 
supper. This notion probably has some reference to 
another popular one, namely, that high spirits fore- 
bode evil, proving the forerunner of adversity. 
Many anecdotes illustrative of this theory have been 
recorded at various times. In the last act of Romeo 
and Juliet, Romeo is introduced as saying : — 

" If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep, 
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand; 
My bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne ; 
And all this day an unaccustomed spirit 
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts." 

In the evidence given at the inquest upon the 
bodies of four persons killed by an explosion at a 
firework manufactory in Bermondsey, October 12th, 
1849, one of the witnesses stated : — ^' On Friday they 
were all very merry, and Mrs. B. said she feared 
something would happen before they went to bed, 
because they were so happy." 

If, in a social gathering of any kind, an unmarried 



FURNITURE OMENS. Ill 

person is inadvertently placed between a man and his 
wife, it is an indication tliat the individual so seated 
will be married within the course of a year. Many 
consider it unlucky to shake hands across the table ; 
and there is also an old superstition mentioned by 
Grose, that, in eating, to miss the mouth and let 
the food fall is a bad omen, betokening approaching 
sickness. Once more, if a person in rising from table 
overturns his chair, this is not a very fortunate 
occurrence, as it is said to show that he has been 
speaking untruths. Without further extending our 
list of the superstitious beliefs and practices that 
have clustered round the table — to which many of 
our readers will doubtless be able to make their own 
additions — we may briefly sum up this branch of the 
subject by saying : — 

*' 'Tis a history 
Handed from ages down ; a nurse's tale, 
Which children open-eyed and mouth' d devour, 
And thus, as garrulous ignorance relates, 
We learn it and beheve." 



CHAPTER IX. 

FURNITURE OMENS. 

Folk-lore of the Looking-glass— Luck of Edenliall— Clock-falling 
— Chairs — Beds — The Bellows. 

The desire to gather omens from the various sur- 
rounding objects of every-day life has naturally in-' 
eluded articles of furniture ; and hence we find signs 



112 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

and portents attached to certain of these which are 
implicitly credited by many, from the highest to the 
lowest, who, notwithstanding, would consider them- 
selves deeply insulted if the idea of their being 
superstitious were only so much as hinted at by some 
sceptical friend. Among the most common of these 
odd fancies are those relating to the looking-glass. 
As a piece of furniture this is most necessary, and its 
very importance is, perhaps, the chief reason why 
superstition has invested it with those mysterious 
qualities which certainly do not belong in the same 
ratio to chairs and tables. A chair, however beautiful 
and costly in its manufacture, may nevertheless be 
cruelly broken with perfect impunity ; whereas, if 
some wretched, dilapidated looking-glass is acci- 
dentally cracked, the inmates of the house are 
thoroughly discomposed, from a conviction that such 
an event is sure to be followed by misfortune of some 
kind or other. In Cornwall, the supjoosed penalty for 
such an offence is seven years of sorrow ; and a York- 
shire proverb informs us that this unfortunate occur- 
rence entails *' seven years^ trouble, but no want." It 
has also been said to foretell the speedy decease of the 
master of the house ; and in Scotland it is regarded as 
an infallible sign that some member of the family will 
shortly die. It has been suggested that this popular 
superstition dates very many years back, and probably 
originated in the terror inspired by the destruction of 
the reflected human image — an interesting illustration 
of how the formation of certain ideas is often deter- 
mined by mere analogy. A similar style of thinking 



FURNITURE OMENS. 113 

also underlies tlie mediaeval necromancer^s practice of 
making a waxen image of his enemy, and shooting at 
it with arrows in order to bring about his death. 

The folk-lore, however, of the looking-glass does 
not end here ; for many consider it the height of 
ill-luck to see the new moon reflected in a looking- 
glass or through a window-pane ; and some mothers 
studiously prevent their youngest child looking in one 
until a year old. It is also associated with marriage 
and death. Thus, in the South of England it is 
regarded as a bad omen for a bride on her wedding 
morning to take a last peep in the glass when she is 
completely dressed in her bridal attire, before starting 
for the church. Hence very great care is generally 
taken to put on a glove or some slight article of 
adornment after the final lingering and reluctant look 
has been taken in the mirror. The idea is that any 
young lady who is too fond of the looking-glass will 
be unfortunate when married. This is by no means the 
only occasion on which superstitious fancy interferes 
with the grown-up maiden's peeps into the looking- 
glass. Thus, Swedish young ladies are afraid of look- 
ing in the glass after dark, or by candle-light, lest by so 
doing they should forfeit the goodwill of the other sex. 

The practice of covering the looking-glass, or re- 
moving it from the chamber of death, still prevails in 
some parts of England — the notion being that ^' all 
vanity, all care for earthly beauty, are over with the 
deceased." It has also been suggested that, as the 
invisible world trenches closely upon the visible one 
in the chamber of death, a superstitious dread is felt 
I 



114 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

of some spiritual being imaging himself forth in tlie 
blank surface of the mirror. Mr. Baring Gould 
considers that the true reason for shrouding the look- 
ing-glass before a funeral was that given him in 
Warwickshire, where there is a popular notion that if 
a person looks into a mirror in the chamber of death 
he will see the corpse looking over his shoulder. 
Again, Brand informs us that looking-glasses were 
generally used by magicians '' in their superstitious 
and diabolical operations." He quotes an old au- 
thority, who says : — " Some magicians, being curious 
to find out by the help of a looking-glass, or a glass 
full of water, a thing that lies hidden, make choice 
of young maids to discern therein those images or 
sights which a person defiled cannot see." Sometimes, 
too, our ancestors dipped a looking-glass into the 
water when they were anxious to ascertain what 
would become of a sick person. Accordingly as he 
looked well or ill in the glass, when covered with the 
drops of water, so they foretold whether he would re- 
cover or not. Mirrors were also regarded by our fore- 
fathers as the most efiective agencies in divining secrets 
and bringing to light hidden mysteries. Thus, there is 
a tradition that the Gunpowder Plot was discovered 
by Dr. John Dee with his magic mirror. We find in 
a prayer-book, printed by Basket t in 1737, an en- 
graving which depicts the following scene : — In the 
centre is a circular looking-glass, in which is the 
reflection of the Houses of Parliament by night, and 
a person entering carrying a dark lantern. On the 
left side there are two men in the costume of James's 



FURNITURE OMENS. 115 

time looking into the mirror — one evidently tlie king, 
the other probably Sir Kenehn Digby. On the right 
side, at the top, is the eye of Providence darting a 
ray on to the mirror; and below are some legs and 
hoofs, as if evil spirits were flying out of the picture. 
This plate, says a correspondent of Notes and Queries^ 
" would seem to represent the method by which, under 
Providence (as is evidenced by the eye), the discovery 
of the Gunpowder Plat was at that time seriously 
believed to have been effected. The tradition, more- 
over, must have been generally believed, or it never 
could have found its way into a prayer-book printed 
by the king's printer." It may be noted, however, 
that as the fame of Dee's magic mirror was at its 
zenith about the time of the Gunpowder Plot, this 
may have led to the mirror being adopted as a popular 
emblem of discovery, or 'throwing light" upon a 
subject. Hence it has been reasonably suggested that 
the mirror in the print may simply be a piece of 
artistic design, rather than evidence of its actual 
employment in the discovery. 

In days gone by, too, it appears to have been 
customary for both sexes to wear small looking-glasses 
— a fantastic fashion much ridiculed by Ben Jonson 
and others of his time. Men even wore them in 
their hats — an allusion to which custom we find in 
Ben Jonson's Cynthia s Revels (Act ii., sc. 1) ; ''Where 
is your page ? Call for your casting-bottle, and place 
your mirror in your hat as I told you." We may 
infer that this was the very height of affectation by 
the nuamer in which the remark is introduced. 



116 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

While men of fashion wore mirrors as brooches or 
ornaments in their hats, ladies carried them at their 
girdles or on their breasts. Thus Lovelace makes a 
lady say : — 

" My lively shade thou ever shalt retains 
In thy inclosed feather-framed giasse." 

It was a popular superstition in former years that 
fine glass, such as that of Venice, would break if 
poison were put into it. To this curious notion 
Massinger thus gracefully alludes : — 

" Here crystal glasses .... 

This pure metal 

So innocent is, and faithful to the mistress, 
Or master, that possesses it, that rather 
Than hold one drop that's venomous, of itself 
It flies in pieces, and deludes the traitor." 

This is among the errors noticed by Sir Thomas 
Browne, who says, " And although it be said that 
poison will break a Yenice glass, yet have we not 
met with any of that nature. Were there a truth 
herein, it were the best preservative for princes and 
persons exalted to such fears, and surely far better 
than divers now in use." It may not be inappropriate 
here to refer to the well-known tradition connected 
with the " Luck of Edenhall. " From time immemorial 
there has been a current belief that any one who had 
the courage to rush upon a fairy festival and snatch 
from the merry throng their drinking-glass, would 
find it prove to him a constant source of good fortune, 
supposing he could carry it across a running stream. 
A glass has been carefully preserved at Edenhall, 



FURNITURE OMENS. 117 

Cumberland, which was in all probability a sacred 
chalice ; but the legend is that the butler, one 
day going to draw water, surprised a company of 
fairies who were amusing themselves on the grass 
near the well. He seized the glass that was standing 
upon its margin, which the fairies tried to recover, but, 
after an ineffectual struggle, they vanished, crying : — 

** If that glass do hreak or fall. 
Farewell the luck of Edenhall." 

The good fortune, however, of this ancient house 
was never so much endangered as by the Duke of 
Wharton, who, on one occasion having drunk the 
contents of this magic glass, inadvertently dropped it, 
and here most assuredly would for ever have ter- 
minated the luck of Edenhall, if the butler, who 
stood at his elbow to receive the empty glass, had not 
happily caught it in his napkin. 

Referring, however, more particularly to our 
subject, we find several items of folk-lore associated 
with the clock. Thus, in the North of England, there 
is a superstition called "Clock-falling," the idea 
being that if a woman enters a house after her 
confinement, and before being churched, the house- 
clock will immediately fall on its face. So strong 
was this belief in years past that a woman would 
never think of transgressing this rule under any 
circumstances whatever. In some places the house- 
clock is stopped on the occasion of a death, no doubt 
to remind the survivors that with the deceased one 
time is over, and that henceforth the days and hours 



118 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

are no longer of any account to liim. A corres- 
pondent of Notes and Queries informs us that lie 
knew ^^an intelligent, well-informed gentleman in 
Scotland who, among his last injunctions on his 
death-bed, ordered that as soon as he expired the 
house-clock was to be stopped, a command which was 
strictly obeyed." Aubrey also tells us that formerly 
it was customary for people of a serious turn of mind 
to say, every time they heard the clock strike, " Lord, 
grant my last hour may be my best hour." 

Chairs, again, have their superstitions. It is 
regarded as a bad omen, for instance, if, when a 
person leaves a house, he replaces the chair on which 
he has been sitting against the wall, the probability 
being that he Avill never visit the house again. The 
chair on which a woman sits after her confinement 
to receive the congratulations of her friends is 
popularly termed " a groaning chair," an allusion to 
which we find in " Poor Robin's Almanack " : — 

" For a nurse, the child to dandle, 
Sugar, soap, spiced pots, and candle, 
A groaning chair, and eke a cradle." 

Another article of furniture not without its folk-lore 
is the bed. Thus some superstitious persons always 
have their bedsteads placed parallel to the planks 
of the floor, considering it unlucky to sleep across 
the boards. Others again pay particular attention 
to the point of the compass towards which the head 
should be when in bed, a belief we find existing 
even among the Hindoos, who believe that to sleep 
with the head to the north will cause one's days to 



FURNITURE OMENS. 119 

be shortened. To lie in the direction of the south 
they say is productive of longevity, whereas the 
east and west, it is asserted, are calculated to bring 
riches and change of scene respectively. Various 
theories in this country have been, at different times, 
started as to the proper position of the bedstead 
during the hours of sleep, which find ready accept- 
ance among those who are ever ready to grasp any 
new idea, however fanciful it may be. A corre- 
spondent of The Builder^ writing on the subject, 
says : — " So far as my own observations have gone, I 
know that my sleep is always more sound when my 
head is placed to the north. There are persons whom 
I know, the head of whose bed is to the north, and 
who, to awake early, will reverse their usual position 
in the bed, but without knowing the reason why, 
beyond ^ that they could always wake earlier,' the 
sleep being more broken." An eminent physician 
in Scotland states that, when he failed by every other 
prescription to bring sleep to invalid children, he 
recommended their couches or little beds to be turned 
due north and south — the head of the child being 
placed towards the north — a process which he had 
always found successful in promoting sleep. After all, 
however, as has been so often said, the best prescrip- 
tion for a good night's rest is a healthy body and a 
sound mind. 

The well-known phrase, " to get out of bed the 
wrong way," or " with the left leg foremost," is 
generally said of an ill-tempered person ; the term 
having originated in an ancient superstition, which 



120 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

regarded it as unlucky to place the left foot first on 
the ground on getting out of bed. 

Once more, as a mark of the simplicity of ancient 
manners, it was customary for persons even of the 
highest rank to sleep together, an allusion to which 
practice occurs in Henry V. , where Exeter says : — 

*' I^ay, but the man that was his bedfellow, 
Whom he hath cloy'd and grac'd with kingly favours." 

In conclusion, we may take one further illustra- 
tion on this subject from that useful little article, the 
bellows, to place which on a table is considered ex- 
tremely unlucky, and few servants will either do it or 
allow it to be done. 



CHAPTER X. 

HOUSEHOLD SUPERSTITIONS. 

Prevalence and Continuity of Superstitions — Sneezing — Stumbling 
— A Whistling "Woman — Sweeping — Breaking Crockery — Fires 
and Candles— Money— Other Superstitions. 

It has often been asked how that formidable array of 
superstitions, which are so firmly established in most 
houses, came into being, and what is their origin ? 
Although indeed one may occasionally smile at the 
" reign of terror " which these frequently exercise 
over their credulous believers, yet it must be admitted 
they are not limited to any one class. In discussing 
and comparing the intellectual condition of one class 
of society with another, we are apt, while passing 



HOUSEHOLD SUPERSTITIONS. 121 

censure on the one for its odd notions and fanciful 
beliefs, to forget how the other often cherishes the 
very same, although it may be in a more disguised 
form. Thus, by way of example, whereas some 
ignorant persons resort to a cunning man or 
^' wise woman " for advice in case of emergency, 
many an educated person is found consulting with 
equal faith a clairvoyant or spirit-medium. While, 
too, some uneducated person believes in a particular 
omen, which is condemned by an intelligent com- 
munity as the height of folly, many cultivated people, 
as we have said, may be found who hesitate before 
sitting down to dinner when the party consists of 
thirteen. However much, therefore, we may dislike 
to own the fact, we must acknowledge that superstition 
is a distinct element in the human character, although 
under the influence of education it has not the same 
opportunity for development as in the case of those 
whose mental powers have never been thoroughly 
trained. These superstitions, beliefs, and practices, 
too, it must be remembered, have not sprung up in 
a day, but have been handed down from genera- 
tion to generation in popular traditions, tales, rhymes, 
and proverbs, and consequently have become so inter- 
woven with the daily life as to make it no easy task 
to root them out. It has been truly said : — 

" How superstitiously we mind our evils ! 
The throwing down salt, or crossing of a hare, 
Bleeding at nose, the stumbling of a horse, 
Or singing of a cricket, are of power 
To daunt whole man in us." 



122 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

As Mr. Tylor has truly shown, when a custom or 
superstition is once fairly started in the world, disturb- 
ing influences may long affect it so slightly that it 
may keep its course from generation to generation, as 
a stream once settled in its bed will flow on for ages. 
Thus thousands of superstitions, the true meanings of 
which have perished for centuries, continue to exist 
simply because they have existed. A striking example 
of this fact may be found in the widespread folk-lore 
associated with the act of sneezing in this and other 
countries, which may be traced back to the most 
remote period. Thus, in the classic ages of Greece and 
Rome, we read of the lucky sneeze of Telemachus, and 
of Aristotle's remark that people consider a sneeze as 
divine, but not a cough. On account of sneezing 
being deemed lucky, it has always been customary 
to salute the sneezer, a custom which the ancient 
Greeks claimed to have derived from Prometheus, 
who stole celestial Are to animate his newly-made 
figure of clay. Tradition says that as the fire per- 
meated its frame, the creature sneezed, which caused 
Prometheus to invoke blessings on it. Anyhow the 
practice of salutation on sneezing dates from the 
earliest times, and it is interesting to find a super- 
stition of this kind, which may be looked on as a 
curiosity of primitive civilisation, still existing in our 
midst. Thus, in the Midland counties, grandmothers 
still exclaim, *^ God help you ! " when they hear a 
child sneeze ; and it is a very common notion that 
to sneeze three times before breakfast is a pledge 
that one will soon receive a present of some kmd. 



HOUSEHOLD SUPERSTITIONS. 123 

The sneezing of a cat is considered an evil omen, it 
being a sign that the family will all have colds. 
According to a Scotch superstition a new-born child 
is in the fairy spells until it sneezes, but when this 
takes place all danger is past. A correspondent of 
Notes and Queries tells us that he once overheard 
"an old and reverend-looking dame crooning over a 
new-born child, and then, watching it intently and in 
silence for nearly a minute, she said, taking a huge 
pinch of snufF, ' Oich ! Oich ! No yet — no yet.* 
Suddenly the youngster exploded in a startling 
manner, into a tremendous sneeze ; when the old 
lady suddenly bent down and, as far as I could see 
drew her forefinger across the brows of the child, very 
much as if making the sign of the cross (although as 
a strict Calvinist she would have been scandalised at 
the idea), and joyfully exclaimed, 'God sain the bairn 
it's 710 a warlochy^ Indeed it is a very prevalent 
idea that no idiot ever sneezed or could sneeze. 
Some attach importance to the day on which a person 
sneezes ; and in the West of England it is said that — 

*' Sneeze on Sunday morning fasting, 
You'll enjoy your own true love to everlasting." 

Another household superstition which has come 
down to us from the far-ofi* past is connected with 
stumbling ; frequent allusions to which occur in the 
classic writers. Thus, at the present day to stumble 
up-stairs is considered unlucky by some, but just the 
reverse by others. Grose remarks that to stumble up 
the stairs is a prognostic of good luck, and in some 



124 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

places it is supposed to indicate that the stumbler if un- 
married will cease to be so before the year is out. 
Others affirm that to stumble in the morning as soon 
as one goes out of doors is a sign of ill-luck. As an 
instance of this omen in ancient times, it is stated that 
Tiberius Gracchus, as he was leaving his house on the 
day of his death, stumbled upon the threshold with 
such violence that he broke the nail of his great toe. 
It is not necessary, however, to quote further cases of 
this superstition in years gone by, it being sufficient 
for our purpose to show that it has been handed down 
to us by our ancestors, and that stumbling, like 
sneezing, has always been regarded as an ominous act. 
Again, stumbling at a grave has been ranked among 
unlucky omens, a superstition to which Shakespeare 
refers in Romeo and Juliet (Act v., sc. 3), where Friar 

Laurence says : — 

" How oft to-night 
Have my old feet stumbled at graves.'* 

We may also compare Gloucester's words in 3 Henry 
VI. (Act v., sc. 3) :— 

** For many men that stumble at the threshold 
Are well foretold that danger lurks within." 

Hence vaiious charms have been practised to 
counteract the supposed ill-effect of this unlucky act, 
upon which Poor Robin, in his "Almanack for 1695," 
quaintly remarks : — " All those who, walking the 
streets, stumble at a stick or stone, and when they 
are past it turn back again to spurn or kick the stone 
they stumbled at, are liable to turn students in 
Goatam College, and upon admittance to have a coat 



HOUSEHOLD SUPERSTITIONS. 125 

put upon him, with a cap, a bauble, and other orna- 
ments belonging to his degree." 

Again, in most places there is a very strong 
antipathy to a woman whistling about a house, or 
even out of doors, this act being said to be always 
attended with fatal results. Thus, there is a Cornish 
saying to the following effect : — *' A whistling woman 
and a crowing hen are the two unluckiest things under 
the sun ; " and the ISTorthamptonshire peasantry have 
this rhyme which is to the same purport : — 

" A whistling woman and crowing hen 
Are neither fit for God nor men." 

Or, according to another version : — 

*' A whistling wife and a crowing hen 
Will call the old gentleman out of his den.'* 

Why there should be this superstitious dislike to a 
woman's whistling it is difficult to decide, but at 
the same time it is a curious fact that one seldom 
hears any of the fair sex amusing themselves in 
this manner. Mr. Henderson informs us that the 
seafaring part of the population on the coast of 
Yorkshire have the same dread of hearing a woman 
whistle. A few years ago, when a party of friends 
were going on board a vessel at Scarborough, the 
captain astonished them by declining to allow one of 
them to enter it. " Not that young lady," he said, 
''she whistles." Curiously enough the vessel was 
lost on her next voyage ; so, had the poor girl set 
foot on it, the misfortune would certainly have been 
ascribed to her. According to one legend, this super- 



126 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

stition originated in the circumstance that a woman 
stood by and whistled while she watched the nails for 
the Cross being forged. A correspondent of Notes 
and Queries assigns another origin. He tells us 
that one day, after attempting in vain to get his dog 
to obey orders to come into the house, his wife 
essayed to whistle, when she was suddenly inter- 
rupted by a servant, a Roman Catholic, who 
exclaimed in the most piteous accents, "If you 
please, ma'am, don't whistle. Every time a woman 
whistles, the heart of the Blessed Virgin bleeds." 
The French, it seems, have a similar prejudice to 
hearing a woman whistle about a house, their proverb 
being as follows : — " Une poule qui chante le coq, et 
une fi lie qui siffle, portent malheur dans la maison." 

There are numerous signs and omens connected 
with household work. Thus, in Suffolk, the people 
say that if after sweeping a room the broom is 
accidentally left up in a corner, strangers will visit 
the house in the course of that day ; while others 
affirm, in the Northern counties, that to sweep dust 
out of the house by the front door is equivalent to 
sweeping away the good fortune and happiness of 
the family. Care should rather be taken to 
sweep inwards — the dust being carried out in a 
basket or shovel — and then no harm will happen. 
Furthermore, the spider, which in daily life is 
little noticed except for its cobweb, the presence of 
which in a house generally betokens neglect, is by no 
means an unfriendly intruder. Although the servant 
oftentimes ruthlessly sweeps this uncared-for little 



HOUSEHOLD SUPERSTITIONS. 127 

visitor, away from the wall, yet a common proverb 
reminds us that — 

" If you wish to live and thrive, 
Let the spider run alive," 

ill-luck being supposed to quickly overtake those who 
kill or even so much as injure it. It was a notion 
formerly prevalent in many parts of Scotland that 
should a servant wilfully kill a spider, she would 
certainly break a piece of crockery or glass before the 
day was out. One reason why the spider is protected 
against ill-usage is that it is supposed to bring pros- 
perity ; but the real cause, perhaps, is due to the 
influence of an old legend which relates how, when 
Christ lay in the manger at Bethlehem, the spider 
came and spun a web over the spot where He was, 
thus preserving His life by screening Him from all 
the dangers that surrounded Him. 

Heferring to the breaking of crockery, of which we 
have just spoken, there is a prevalent idea that if a 
servant breaks two things she will break a third. On 
one occasion the mistress of a household in Suffolk 
was not a little horrified at seeing one of her servants 
take up a coarse earthenware basin and deliberately 
throw it down upon the brick floor. '' What did you 
do that for 1 " she not unnaturally inquired. " Because, 
ma'am, I'd broke two things," answered the servant, 
" so I thout the third better be this here," pointing 
to the remains of the least valuable piece of pottery 
in the establishment, which had been sacrificed to 
glut the vengeance of the offended ceramic deities. 
A correspondent of Chambers' ^' Book of Days," 



128 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

alluding to another piece of superstition of this 
kind, tells us that he once had a servant who was 
very much given to breaking glass and crockery. 
Plates and wine-glasses used to slip out of her 
hands as if they had been soaped; even spoons 
came jingling to the ground in rapid succession. 
"Let her buy something," said the cook, ^'and 
that will change the luck." " Decidedly," said the 
mistress, " it will be as well that she feel the 
inconvenience herself.'' ^* Oh, I didn't mean that, 
ma'am ! " was the reply ; " I meant that it would 
change the luck." A few days after this conversation, 
on being asked whether she had broken anything 
more, she answered, '' No, sir, I haven't broken nothing 
since I bout the 'tater dish." Unluckily, however, 
this was too good to last ; the breaking soon re-com- 
menced, and the servant was obliged to go. 

A superstitious dread still attaches in household 
matters to Friday as being an unlucky day, and many 
will not even so much as turn a bed for fear of some 
misfortune befalling them. Thus, in Northampton- 
shire, we are told the housewife allows the bed to 
remain unturned ; and a Sussex saying admonishes 
persons " never to begin a piece of work on Friday, 
or they will never finish it." We may note here 
that one tradition assigns a very early origin to the 
unfortunate reputation of Friday, affirming that it 
was on this day that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden 
fruit. It is considered very unlucky to change servants 
on this day of the week, and many try to avoid, if 
possible, doing so. 



HOUSEHOLD SUPERSTITIONS. 129 

That bright and ever-cheerful companion of our 
homes in winter time, the fire, has given rise to a 
host of omens and portents, many of which at times 
create no small consternation when the events sup- 
posed to be prognosticated are not of a very lucky 
character. A hollow cinder, for example, thrown out 
of the fire by a jet of gas from burning coals is 
looked upon as a coffin if it be long, but as a money- 
box if it be round. Some, too, exclaim on seeing the 
fire suddenly blaze up that a stranger is near 3 whereas 
in the Midland counties if the fire burn brightly 
after it has been stirred, this is considered a sign that 
the absent lover, wife, or husband, as the case may be, 
is in good spirits. A very popular charm for reviving 
a fire when it has burnt down is to set the poker across 
the hearth, with the fore-part leaning against the top 
bar of the grate. The poker and top bar thus combined 
form a cross, and so defeat the malice of the witches 
and demons who preside over smoky chimneys. One 
notion is that the poker when in this position creates 
a draught, but the real meaning of this harmless super- 
stition is, perhaps, the one that we have just given. 
Various items of weather-lore, also, have been derived 
from the way fires burn, an enumeration of which we 
find in Willsford's " Nature's Secrets" : — "When our 
common fires do burn with a pale flame, they presage 
foul weather. If the fire do make a buzzing noise, it 
is a sign of tempests near at hand. When the fire 
sparkleth very much, it is a sign of rain. If the- 
ashes on the hearth do dodder together of themselves, 
it is a sign of rain. When pots are newly taken off 
J 



130 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

the fire, if tliey sparkle, the soot upon them being 
incensed, it is a sign of rain. When the fire scorcheth 
and burneth more vehemently than it nseth to do, it 
is a sign of frosty weather ; but if the living coals do 
shine brighter than commonly at other times, expect 
then rain. If wood, or any other fuel, do crackle and 
v/ind break forth more than ordinary, it is an evident 
sign of some tempestuous weather near at hand ; the 
much and sudden falling of soot presages rain." 
Once more, there is a curious notion that if a person 
sit musing and intently looking into the fire, it is a 
sign that a badly-disposed person is either fascinating 
him for evil, or throwing an evil spell over him. 
When this is the case, in order to break the spell, 
some one without speaking or attracting notice should 
take the tongs and turn the centre piece of coal in the 
grate right over, at the same time repeating certain 
words. While speaking of fires, we may note that 
there is a belief among the Yorkshire peasants that 
it is unlucky to allow a light to be taken out of their 
houses on Christmas Day — a superstition which pre- 
vails in Lancashire with regard to New Year's Day. 
A few years ago a man was summoned at Bradford 
on a charge of wilful damage by breaking a pane of 
glass in a cottage window. Having entered for the 
purpose of lighting his candle, the woman of the 
house strongly remonstrated, but offered him instead 
a few matches. The man then created a disturbance, 
and on the husband trying to eject him he broke the 
window. 

Omens, too, from candles are very numerous. Thus, 



HOUSEHOLD SUPERSTITIONS. 131 

we may note that in some of the Northern coun- 
ties a bright spark in the candle predicts the arrival 
of a letter, and if it drops on the first shake, it is 
an indication that the letter has already been posted. 
To snuff out a candle accidentally is a sign of matri- 
mony, and a curious mode of divination is still practised 
by means of a pin and a candle. The anxious lover, 
while the candle is burning, takes a pin and cautiously 
sticks it through the wax, taking care that it pierces 
the wick, repeating meanwhile the following rhyme : — 

** It's not this candle alone I stick, 
But A. B.'s heart I mean to prick ; 
Whether he be asleep or awake, 
I'd have him come to me and speak." 

She then patiently watches, for if the pin remains 
in the wick after the candle has burnt below the place 
in which it was inserted, then the loved one will be 
sure to appear ; but should the pin drop out, it is a 
sign that he is faithless. 

There are, however, a host of other superstitions 
relating to home-life, some of which we can only 
briefly describe, scattered as they are here and there 
over the United Kingdom, and varying in different 
localities. Thus, according to a well-known super- 
stition, if a person suddenly shivers, it is a sign that 
some one is walking over his future grave, a notion 
which is not limited to any particular county, extend- 
ing as far north as Scotland. It is fortunate, how- 
ever, that all persons are not subject to this sensation, 
otherwise the inhabitants of those districts or parishes 



132 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

whose burial-grounds are much frequented would, as 
an old antiquarian writer has observed, " live in one 
continued fit of shaking." Some, too, deem it unlucky 
to turn back after they have once started on some 
errand, or to be recalled and told of something pre- 
viously forgotten. This superstition extends beyond 
our own country, and is found on the Continent, as for 
example in Sweden, where it is considered unadvisable 
not only to turn round when one is going on business, 
lest it should turn out ill, but even so much as to 
look back. At the present day, too, in the Midland 
counties, children are frequently cautioned by their 
parents not to walk backwards when going on some 
errand, it being regarded as a sure sign that misfor- 
tune will befall them if they disobey this injunction. 
Akin to this superstition, there are several others of 
a similar kind, among w^hich we may include the 
supposed ill-luck of walking under a ladder ; and North- 
country people have a dislike to meeting a left-handed 
person on a Tuesday morning, although on other days 
it is considered fortunate to do so. Keferring to the 
many other items of folk-lore associated with our daily 
life, we must not omit those relating to money. Thus, 
it is generally acknowledged to be a bad omen to 
find it; and to insure health and prosperity, one 
should always turn a piece of money in one's pocket on 
first seeing the new moon, and on hearing the cuckoo 
in spring. There is, too, the common custom of the 
lower orders to spit on money for "luck's sake," a 
practice which is not only found in foreign countries, 
but may be traced back to ancient times. Misson, in 



HOUSEHOLD SUPERSTITIONS. 133 

his " Travels in England/' describes this piece of super- 
stition as it j)re vailed in this country in former years : — 
** A woman that goes much to market told me t'other 
day that the butcher-women of London, those that sell 
fowls, butter, eggs, etc., and in general most trades- 
people, have a peculiar esteem for what they call a 
handsel, that is to say, the first money they receive in 
the morning they kiss it, spit upon it, and put it in 
a pocket by itself." Many, too, as a charm against 
poverty, carry a piece of money, with a hole in it, or 
one that is bent, in allusion to which Gay says : — 

"This silver ring beside, 
Three silver pennies, and a nine-pence bent, 
A token kind to Brunkinet is sent." 

Others, again, dislike " counting their gains," a 
superstition which, it has been suggested, may have 
some connection with David's sin in numberinor the 

o 

people of Israel and Judah. Hence some regard 
with feelings of strong antipathy our own decennial 
census, and it is only the compulsion of the law which 
induces them to comply with this national means of 
ascertaining the state of the population. Among minor 
superstitions, it is said that smoke and dust always 
follow the fairest ; and if without any neglect, but even 
with care, articles of steel, such as keys, knives, <fcc., 
continually become rusty, it is a sign that some kind- 
hearted person is laying up money for one's benefit. 

When, too, as often by coincidence happens, two 
persons in conversation are on the point of telling 
each other the same thing, it is an indication that 
gome lie will before long be told about them ; others 



134 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

think that if the two immediately join hands and wish 
silently, their desires cannot fail to come to pass. Some 
again, have a strong objection either to being weighed 
or to having their likeness taken, the latter super- 
stition being mentioned by Mr. Napier as prevalent 
in some parts of Scotland. Once more, there is a 
belief among the Sussex peasantry that bottles which 
have contained medicine should never be sold, or else 
they will soon be required to be filled again for some 
one in the house. These are some of the quaint 
superstitions with which even the trivial occurrences 
of home life are surrounded, and although, according 
to one view, many of these have little or no foun- 
dation for their existence beyond their traditionary 
history, yet it is a remarkable fact that they should 
have preserved their characteristic traits in spite of 
the long course of years through which they have 
travelled down to us from the past. 



CHAPTER XL 

POPULAR DIVINATIONS. 

Bible and Key— Dipping— Sieve and Shears— Crowing of the 
Cock — Spatulamancia — Palmistry and Onymancy — Look- 
divination — ^Astrology — Cards — Casting Lot — Tea-stalks. 

The practice of divination, or foretelling future events, 
has existed amongst most nations in all ages ; and, 
although not so popular as in days gone by, yet it 
still retains its hold on the popular mind. Many of 
the methods for diving into futurity are extremely 



POPULAR DIVINATIONS. 135 

curious, and instances of them occasionally find their 
way into the papers. In a previous chapter we 
have already shown how numerous are the divinations 
practised in love affairs, and what an importance is 
attached to them by the maiden bent on ascertaining 
her lot in the marriage state. There are, however, 
many other ends to which this species of superstition 
is employed, one being the detection of guilt. Thus, 
a common method is by the ^' Bible and the Key," 
which is resorted to more or less by the humbler 
classes from one end of the United Kingdom to the 
other, the mode of procedure being as follows : — The 
key is placed on a certain chapter, and the Sacred 
"Volume closed and fastened tightly. The Bible and 
the key are then suspended to a nail, the accused 
person's name is repeated three times by one of those 
present, while another recites these words : — 

"If it turns to thee thou art the thief, 
And we all are free." 

This incantation being concluded, should the key be 
found to have turned, it is unanimously agreed that 
the accused is the guilty one. Not very long ago, a 
lady residing at Ludlow having lost a sheet made use 
of this test. Armed with a copy of the Sacred Book, 
she perambulated the neighbourhood, placing the key 
in the volume near several houses. At last, on 
arriving before a certain door, it was alleged that the 
key with much alacrity began, of its own accord, to 
turn ; whereupon the owner of the lost sheet uttered 
the suspected person's name as loudly as she could ; 



136 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

after which, it is said, the Bible turned completely 
round and fell on the ground. Again, a year or two 
ago, at Southampton, a boy working on a collier was 
charged with theft, the only evidence against him 
being such as was afforded by the ordeal of the Bible 
and key. It seems that the mate and some others 
swung a Bible attached to a key with a piece of yarn, 
the key being placed on the first chapter of Ruth. 
While the Bible was turning, the names of several 
persons suspected were called over, but on mention of 
the prisoner's the book fell on the ground. The bench, 
of course, discharged the prisoner. 

Closely akin to this method of divination is the 
well-known mediaeval diversion known as the Sortes 
Virgiliance, which consisted in opening a volume of 
Yirgil's works, and forecasting the future from some 
word or passage selected at random. The Sacred 
Book is now the modern substitute, and there is 
no doubt but that the superstition is thousands of 
years older than even the Yirgil of the Augustan age. 
This custom, practised in many parts of England on 
New Year's Day, is called ^'Dipping.'* A Bible is 
laid on the table at breakfast-time, and those who 
wish to consult it open its pages at random ; it being 
supposed that the events of the ensuing year will 
be in some way foreshown by the contents of the 
chapter contained in the two open pages. Sometimes 
the anxious inquirer will take the Bible to bed with 
him on ISTew Year's Eve, and on awaking after twelve 
o'clock, open it in the dark, mark a verse with his 
thumb, turn down a corner of the page, and replace 



POPULAR DIVINATIONS. 137 

the book under the pillow. That verse is said to be a 
prophecy of the good or bad hick that will befall him 
during the coming year. This as a mode of divination 
is extensively practised. Another form of this super 
stition consists in foretelling the events in a man's 
life from the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs, 
the thirty-one verses of this chapter being supposed 
to have a mystical reference to the corresponding days 
of the month. Thus, it is predicted of persons born 
on the 14th that they will get their *'food from 
afar." A correspondent of Notes and Queries, writing 
from a Northamptonshire village, tells us that " this 
is so fully believed in by some that a boy has actually 
been apprenticed to a Z^7^e?^-draper, for no other 
reason than because he was born on the 24th of the 
month j whilst those born on the 1 3th would be sent 
to a i6"oo^/67i-draper. The twenty -fourth verse speaks 
of 'fine linen,' and the thirteenth of 'wool.'" 

Another means of discovering a guilty person is 
by the '' Sieve and Shears," one of those divinatory 
instruments upon which such implicit reliance has 
been placed by superstitious folk from time out of 
mind, described as it is in the '' Hudibras " as 

" Th' oracle of sieve and shears, 
That turns as certain as the spheres." 

The sieve is held hanging by a thread, or else by 
the points of a pair of shears stuck into its rim, 
it being su]3posed to turn, or swing, or fall at the 
mention of a thief's name, and give similar signs for 
other purposes, This ancient rite wa§ formerly known 



138 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

as the "Trick of the Sieve and Scissors," and was 
generally practised among the Greeks for ascertaining 
crime. We find an allusion to it in Theocritus : — 

" To Agrio, too, I made the same demand ; 
A cunning woman she, I cross'd her hand : 
She turn'd the sieve and shears, and told me true, 
That I should love, but not be lov'd by you." 

Among other modes of divination practised for the 
same purpose, there is one by the crowing of the cock. 
Thus, a farmer in Cornwall having been robbed of 
some property, invited all his neighbours into his 
cottage, and when they were assembled he placed 
a cock under the " brandice " (an iron vessel formerly 
much used by the peasantry in baking), he then asked 
each one to touch the brandice with the third finger, 
and say, " In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost, speak." Every one did as they were directed, 
and yet no sound came from beneath the brandice. 
The last person was a woman who occasionally 
laboured for the farmer in his field. She hung back, 
hoping to pass unobserved amidst the crowd. The 
neighbours, however, would not permit her to do 
so, and no sooner had she touched the brandice than, 
before she could even utter the prescribed words, 
the cock crew. Thereupon she fainted on the spot, 
and on recovering confessed her guilt. 

In the North of England there was formerly a 
curious process of divination in the case of a person 
bewitched : — A black hen was stolen, the heart taken 
out, stuck full of pins, and roasted at midnight. It 



POPULAR DIVINATIONS. 139 

was then supposed that the *^ double" of the witch 
would come and nearly pull the door down. If, 
however, the " double " was not seen, any one of the 
neighbours who had passed a remarkably bad night 
was fixed upon. 

Referrmg in the next place to what may be con- 
sidered the principal object of divination, a know- 
ledge of futurity, we find various mystic arts in 
use to gain this purpose. Foremost among these may 
be reckoned " Spatulamancia," " reading the speal- 
bone," or '^ divination by the blade-bone," an art 
which is of very ancient origin. It is, we are told 
by Mr. Tylor, especially found in Tartary, whence it 
may have spread into all other countries where we 
hear of it. The mode of procedure is as follows : — 
The shoulder-blade is put on the fire till it cracks in 
various directions, and then a long split lengthwise 
is reckoned as *Hhe way of life," while cross-cracks 
on the right and left stand for different kinds of good 
and evil fortune, and so on. In Ireland, Camden 
speaks of looking through the blade-bone of a sheep, 
to discover a black spot which foretells a death; and 
Drayton in his " Polyolbion " thus describes it : — 

** By th' shoulder of a ram from off the right side par'd, 
"Which usually they boile, the spade-bone being bar'd, 
Which when the wizard takes, and gazing thereupon 
Things long to come foreshows, as things done long agone." 

This species of divination was in days gone by 
much practised in Scotland, and a good account of the 
Highland custom of thus divining is given by Mr. Thorns 



140 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

in the "Folk-Lore Record" (i. 177), from a manu- 
script account by Mr. Donald McPherson, a book- 
seller of Chelsea, a Highlander born, and who was 
well acquainted with the superstitions of his country- 
men : — ** Before the shoulder-blade is inspected, the 
whole of the flesh must be stripped clean off, without 
the use of any metal, either by a bone or a hard wooden 
knife, or by the teeth. Most of the discoveries are 
made by inspecting the spots that may be observed in 
the semi-transparent part of the blade ; but very great 
proficients penetrate into futurity though the opaque 
parts also. Nothing can be known that may happen 
beyond the circle of the ensuing year. The dis- 
coveries made have relation only to the person for 
whom the sacrifice is offered. 

Chiromancy, or palmistry, as a means of unravel- 
ling hidden things, still finds favour not only with 
gipsy fortune-tellers, but even with those who profess 
to belong to the intelligent classes of society. This 
branch of fortune-telling flourished in ancient Greece 
and Italy, as we are informed it still does in India, 
where to say, "It is written on the palms of my hands," 
is the ordinary way of expressing what is looked upon 
as inevitable. The professors of this art formerly 
attributed to it a Divine origin, quoting as their 
authority the following verse from the Book of Job : 
" He sealeth up the hand of every man, that all men 
may know his work ; " or as the Vulgate renders the 
passage : " Qui in manu omnium hominum signa 
posuit" — "Who has placed signs in the hand of all 
men " — which certainly gives it a more chiromantical 



POPULAR DIVINATIOKS. 141 

meaning. Thus chiromancy, or palmistry, traces the 
future from an examination of the "lines" of the 
palm of the hand, each of which has its own peculiar 
character and name, as for instance the line of long 
life, of married life, of fortune, and so on. However 
childish this system may be, it still has its numerous 
votaries, and can often be seen in full force at our 
provincial fairs. Referring to its popularity in this 
country in former years, we find it severely censured 
by variovis writers. Thus one author of the year 1612 
speaks of "vain and frivolous devices of which sort 
we have an infinite number, also used amongst us, as 
namely in palmistry, where men's fortunes are told by 
looking on the palms of the hand." 

A superstition akin to palmistry is onymancy, or 
divination by the finger-nails, which is still a wide- 
spread object of belief. Sir Thomas Browne, in his 
" Vulgar Errors," describing it, admits that conjec- 
tures "of prevalent humours may be gathered from 
the spots on the nails," but rejects the sundry prog- 
nostications usually derived from them, such as "that 
spots on the tops of the nails signify things past, in 
the middle things present, and at the bottom events 
to come ; that white specks presage our felicity, blue 
ones our misfortunes ; that those in the nail of the 
thumb have significations of honour, of the fore-finger 
riches." As practised at the present day, this mode 
of divination differs in various counties. Thus, in 
Sussex, we are told by Mrs. Latham that the fortune- 
tellers commence with the thumb, and say " A gift," 
judging of its probable size by that of the mark. 



142 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

Tliey then toiich the fore-finger, and add "A friend ;" 
and should they find a spot upon the nail of the 
middle finger, they gravely affirm it denotes the 
existence of an enemy somewhere. It is the presence 
or absence of such a mark on the third finger that 
proves one's future good or ill success in love ; whereas 
one on the little finger is a warning that the person 
will soon have to undergo a journey. 

Again, some profess to be able to tell events by the 
face, or ^'look-divination" — a species of physiognomy 
which was formerly much believed in by all classes 
of society, and may still be met with in country 
villages. Indeed, there is scarcely a mark on 
the face which has not been supposed to betoken 
something or other ; and in a book of " Palmistry 
and Physiognomy," translated by Fabian Withers, 
1656, are recorded sundry modes of divination from 
" upright eyebrows, brows hanging over, narrow fore- 
heads, faces plain and flat, lean faces, sad faces, sharp 
noses, ape-like noses, thick nostrils," &c. However 
foolish these may appear, yet there will always be 
simple-minded persons ready to make themselves 
miserable by believing that the future events of their 
life — either for weal or woe — are indelibly written on 
their face. Equally illogical and fanciful is that 
pseudo- science, astrology, whereby the aftairs of 
men, it is said, can be read from the motions of 
the heavenly bodies. A proof of the extensive belief 
at the present day in this mode of divination may be 
gathered from the piles of " Zadkiel's Almanacks " 
which regularly appear in the fashionable booksellers' 



POPULAR DIVINATIONS. 143 

windows about Christmas-time. That educated people, 
who must be aware how names of stars and constella- 
tions have been arbitrarily given by astronomers, 
should still find in these materials for calculating 
human events, is a curious case of superstitious sur- 
vival. Very many, for instance, are firmly convinced 
that a child born under the " Crab " will not do well 
in life, and that another born under the " Waterman" 
is likely to meet with a watery death, and so forth. 
This science, as is well known, is of very old institu- 
tion, and originated in a great measure in the 
primitive ages of the world, when animating intelli- 
gences were supposed to reside in the celestial bodies. 
As these mythical conceptions, however, have long ago 
passed away under the influence of civilisation, one 
would scarcely expect to find in our enlightened nine- 
teenth century so great a number of intellectual persons 
putting faith in such a system of delusion. In this 
respect, happily, we are not worse than our Con- 
tinental neighbours ; for there are many districts in 
Germany where the child^s horoscope is still regularly 
kept with the baptismal certificate in the family 
chest. In days gone by, this kind of divination was 
very widely credited in this country, and by most of 
our old writers is most unsparingly condemned. Thus 
Shakespeare, in King Lear (Act i., sc. 2), has ridiculed 
it in a masterly way, when he represents Edmund as 
saying : " This is the excellent foppery of the world, that 
when we are sick in fortune — often the surfeit of our 
own behaviour — we make guilty of our disasters the 
sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains 



144 1)0MESTIC FOLK-LOM. 

by necessity ; fools by heavenly compulsion ; knaves, 
thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance ; 
drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedi- 
ence of planetary influence." Sir Thomas Browne 
goes so far as to attribute divination by astrology 
to Satan, remarking how he ** makes the ignorant 
ascribe natural effects to supernatural causes ; and 
thus deludes them with this form of error." And 
another old writer sensibly adds that, although astro- 
logers undertake "to tell all people most obscure 
and hidden secrets abroad, they at the same 
time know not what happens in their own houses 
and in their own chambers." In spite, however, of 
the frequent denunciations of this popular form of 
superstition, it appears that they had little effect, for 
James I. was notorious for his credulity about such 
delusions ; and both Charles I. and Cromwell are 
said to have consulted astrologers. 

A further form of divination still much practised 
is by a pack of cards, most of these being supposed to 
have a symbolical meaning ; the king of hearts, for 
example, denoting a true-loving swain, and the 
king of diamonds indicating great wealth. The fol- 
lowing quaint lines, extracted from an old chap-book 
quoted in Brand's '* Popular Antiquities," describe 
this mode of fortune-telling as it was formerly con- 
sulted by our credulous countrymen : — 

" This noble king of diamond shows, 
Thou long shalt live where pleasure flows ; 
But when a woman draws the king, 
Great melancholy songs she'll sing. 



POPULAR DIVINATIONS. 145 

He that draws the ace of hearts, 
Shall surely be a man of parts ; 
And she that draws it, I profess, 
Will have the gift of idleness.'* 

Indeed, scarcely a month passes without several per- 
sons being punished for extorting money from silly 
people, on the pretence of revealing to them by card- 
divination their future condition in life. Among the 
gipsies this is the favourite form of fortune-telling ; 
and its omens are eagerly received by anxious aspi- 
rants after matrimony, who are ever desirous to know 
whether their husbands are to be tall or short, dark 
or fair, rich or poor, and so on. Mrs. Latham tells us 
of a certain woman who was reported to be skilful in 
such matters, and was in the habit of confidently 
foretelling with a pack of cards her fellow-servants' 
coming lot in matrimony. The mode of procedure 
was as follows : — The cards were dealt round by 
the diviner, with much mystical calculation, and 
the fortunate maiden who found the ace of dia- 
monds in her heap was to marry a rich man. The 
one, however, who was unlucky enough to have the 
knave of clubs or spades was destined to have 
nothing but poverty and misery in her wedded state. 
Again, the presence of the king of diamonds or of 
hearts in hand was a sign that the possessor's partner 
for life would be a fair man, while the king of 
clubs or spades gave warning that he would 
be dark. To find in one's heap either the knave 
of hearts or of diamonds was most ominous, as it 
revealed an unknown enemy. Again, divination by 



146 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

casting lot has not yet fallen into disuse. Accord- 
ing to some this means of deciding doubtful matters 
is of God's appointment, and therefore cannot fail, 
the following text being quoted as a proof : " The 
lot is cast into the lap ; but the whole disposing 
thereof is of the Lord " (Proverbs xvi. 33). In 
Lancashire, when boys do not wish to divide any- 
thing they decide " who must take all " by drawing 
'^ short cuts." A number of straws, pieces of twine, 
&c., of different lengths, are held by one not inte- 
rested, so that an equal portion of each is alone 
visible ; each boy draws one, and he who gets the 
longest is entitled to the prize. 

A new-laid egg affords another means of diving 
into futurity. The person anxious to be enlightened 
about his future perforates with a pin the small end 
of an egg, and lets three drops of the white fall into 
a basin of water, which soon diffuse themselves- on 
the surface into a variety of fantastic shapes. From 
these the fortune-teller will predict the fortune of 
the credulous one, the character of his future wife, 
and a variety of particulars concerning his domestic 
happiness. A similar practice is kept up in Den- 
mark, where young women melt lead on New Year's 
Eve, and after pouring it into water, observe on the 
following morning what form it has assumed. If it 
resembles a pair of scissors, they will inevitably marry 
tailors ] if a hammer, their husbands will be smiths, 
and so on. 

Divination by a staff was formerly a common 
practice in Scotland. When a person wished to go 



POPULAR DIVINATIONS. 147 

on a pleasure excursion into the country, and was 
vmsettled in his mind as to which way to go, he 
resorted to this form of consulting fate. Taking a 
stick, he would poise it perpendicularly, and then 
leave it to fall of itself ; and he would select the direc- 
tion towards which it pointed while it lay on the 
ground. It has been suggested by some of our 
Biblical scholars that it is to this sort of divination 
that the prophet Hosea referred when he said *^ Their 
staff declareth unto them ;" but this is mere conjecture. 
Among other common modes of divination may be 
mentioned that by tea-stalks. If two appear on the 
surface of a cup of tea, they should be placed on the 
back of the left hand, and struck with the back of the 
right. If they remain unmoved on the left, or adhere 
to the right, then it is an omen that the absent loved 
one will remain faithful. Tea-stalks are also said to 
foretell visitors, indicating the person to be visited by 
floating to the side of the individual. We might 
easily extend our list of popular divinations, but 
space forbids our doing so ; and those already enu- 
merated in the preceding pages have perhaps given 
a sufficient idea of the devices which have been 
resoi-ted to, from time to time, by our superstitious 
country-folk for gaining an insight into futurity. 



lis DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 



CHAPTER XIL 

COMMON AILMENTS. 

Charm-reinedies — For Ague— Bleeding of the Nose — Bums — 
Cramp — Epilej)sy— Fits — Gout — Headache, &c. 

At the present day, in spite of the " march of intel- 
lect/' there is still a wide-spread belief in the preven- 
tion and cure of the common ailments of life by 
certain remedies, which take the form of charms 
and amulets, or are preserved in those countless 
quaint recipes which, from time immemorial, have 
been handed down from parent to child. Indeed, 
thousands of our population place far greater faith in 
their domestic treatment of disease than in the skill 
of medical science^ one of the chief requirements being 
that the patient should submit to the treatment re- 
commended for his recovery with a full and earnest 
belief that a cure will be effected. Hence, however 
eccentric the remedy for some complaint may be, 
we occasionally find not only the ignorant but even 
educated classes scrupulously obeying the directions 
enjoined on them, although these are often by no 
means easy of accomplishment. Therefore, as most 
of the ordinary ailments of every-day life have what 
are popularly termed in folk-medicine their " charm- 
remedies," we shall give a brief account of some of 



COMMON AILMENTS. 149 

these remedies in the present chapter, arranging the 
diseases they are supposed to cure in alphabetical order. 

Ague. — No complaint, perhaps, has offered more 
opportunities for the employment of charms than 
this one, owing in a great measure to an old super- 
stition that it is not amenable to medical treatment. 
Thus, innumerable remedies have been suggested for 
its cure, many of which embody the strangest super- 
stitious fancies. According to a popular notion, 
fright is a good cure, and by way of illustration we 
may quote the case of a gentleman, afflicted by this 
disease in an aggravated form, who entertained a 
great fear of rats. On one occasion he was acci- 
dentally confined in a room with one of these un- 
welcome visitors, and the intruder jumped upon 
him. The intensity of his alarm is said to have 
driven out the ague, and to have completely cured 
him. An amusing anecdote is also told of a poor 
woman who had suffered from this unenviable com- 
plaint for a long time. Her husband having heard 
of persons being cured by fright, one day came to 
her with a very long face, and informed her that 
her favourite pig was dead. Her first impulse was 
to rush to the scene of the catastrophe, where she 
found to her great relief that piggy was alive and 
well. The fright, however, had done its work, 
and from that day forth she never had a touch of 
ague, although she resided in the same locality. A 
Sussex remedy prescribes " seven sage leaves to be 
eaten by the patient fasting seven mornings running ;" 



150 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

and in Suffolk the patient is advised to take a 
handful of salt, and to bury it in the ground, the 
idea being that as the salt dissolves so he will lose 
his ague. A Devonshire piece of folk-lore tells us 
that a person suffering from ague may easily give 
it to his neighbour by burying under his threshold a 
bag containing the parings of a dead man's nails, and 
some of the hairs of his head. Some people wear a 
leaf of tansy in their shoes, and others consider pills 
made of a spider's web equally efficacious, one pill 
being taken before breakfast for three successive 
mornings. 

Bleeding of the Nose. — A key, on account of the 
coldness of the metal of which it is composed, is 
often placed on the person's back ; and hence the 
term " key-cold " has become proverbial, an allusion to 
which we find in King Richard III, (Act i., sc. 2), 
where Lady Anne, speaking of the corpse of King 
Henry YL, exclaims : — 

" Poor key-cold figure of a holy king." 

A Norfolk remedy consists in wearing a skein of 
scarlet silk round the neck, tied with nine knots 
in the front. If the patient is a male, the silk 
should be put on and the knots tied by a female, 
and vice versa. In some places a toad is killed by 
transfixing it with some sharp-pointed instrument, 
after which it is enclosed in a little bag and suspended 
round the neck. 



COMMON AILMENTS. 151 

Bum or Scald. — According to a deep-rooted notion 
among our rural population, the most efficacious cure 
for a scald or burn is to be found in certain word- 
charms, mostly of a religious character. One 
example runs as follows : — 

" There came two angels from the north, 
One was Fire, and one was Frost. 
Out Fire : in Frost, 
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." 

Many of our peasantry, instead of consultuig a 
doctor in the case of a severe burn, often resort to 
some old woman supposed to possess the gift of 
healing. A person of this description formerly re- 
sided in a village in Suffolk. AVhen consulted she 
prepared a kind of ointment, which she placed on the 
part affected, and after making the sign of the cross, 
repeated the following formula three times : — 

" There were two angels came from the north, 
One brought fire, the other brought frost ; 
Come out fire, go in frost, 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.*' 

This, as the reader will see, is in substance the same 
as the one quoted above, and is a fair sample of those 
used in other localities. 

Cram}). — Of the many charms resorted to for the 
cure of this painful disorder, a common one consists 
in wearing about the person the patella or knee-cap 
of a sheep or lamb, which is known in some places 
as the " cramp-bone." This is worn as near the skin 



152 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

as possible, and at night is laid under the pillow. In 
many counties finger-rings made from the screws or 
handles of coffins are still considered excellent pre- 
servatives, and in Lancashire it is prevented by either 
placing the shoes at bed-time with the toes just 
peeping from beneath the coverlet, or by carrying 
brimstone about with one during the day. Some, 
again, wear a tortoise-shell ring, while others have 
equal faith in tying the garter round the left 
leg below the knee. In days gone by a celebrated 
cure for this complaint was the "cramp-ring," allu- 
sions to which we find in many of our old authors. 
Its supposed virtue was conferred by solemn conse- 
cration on Good Friday. 

Epilepsy, — The remedies for this terrible disorder 
are extremely curious, and in most cases vary in 
different localities. One, however, very popular 
charm is a ring made from a piece of silver money 
collected at the oflfertory. A correspondent of 
Chambers's " Book of Days " tells us that when 
he was a boy a person " came to his father (a clergy- 
man) and asked for a ^sacramental shilling,' i,e., one 
out of the alms collected at the Holy Communion, to 
be made into a ring and worn as a cure for epilepsy." 
In the North of England " a sacramental piece,'* 
as it is usually called, is the sovereign remedy for this 
complaint. Thirty pence are to be begged of thirty 
poor widows. They are then to be carried to the 
church minister, for which he is to give the applicant 
a half-crown piece from the communion alms. After 



COMMON AILMENTS. 153 

being "walked with nine times up and down the 
church aisle," the piece is then to have a hole drilled in 
it, and to be hung round the neck by a ribbon. It has 
been suggested that these widows' pence may have some 
reference to the widow's mite which was so estimable 
in the eyes of Christ. According to one notion, per- 
sons afflicted with epileptic fits are supposed to be 
bewitched, and the following extraordinary remedy is 
sometimes resorted to for their cure. A quart bottle 
is filled with pins, and placed in front of the fire until 
the pins are red-hot. As soon as this takes place it 
is supposed they will prick the heart of the witch, 
who to avoid the pain caused by the red-hot pins will 
release her victim from the sufiering she has imposed 
upon him. This mode of disenchantment seems to have 
been of common occurrence ; and sometimes, when 
old houses are under repair, bottles full of pins are 
found secreted in out-of-the-way places. Another 
remedy is for the patient to creep, head foremost, 
down three pair of stairs, three times a day, for 
three successive days. Sir Thomas Brown, too, dis- 
courses of the virtues of mistletoe in this com- 
plaint; and Sir John Colbach, wilting in the year 
1720, strongly recommends it as a medicine, adding 
that this beautiful plant must have been designed by 
the Almighty ^^ for further and more noble purposes 
than barely to feed thrushes, or to be hung up super- 
stitiously in houses to drive away evil spirits." 

Erysipelas, — This distemper has been popularly 
called "St. Anthony's Fire," from the legend that 



154 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

it was miraculously checked by that saint when 
raging in many parts of Europe in the eleventh 
century. An amulet formerly worn to ward it off 
was made of the elder on which the sun had never 
shone. '^ If," says an old writer, "the piece between 
the two knots be hung about the patient's neck, 
it is much commended. Some cut it in little pieces, 
and sew it in a knot in a piece of a man's shirt." 
A remedy in use among the lower orders, and 
extending as far as the Highlands, is to cut off one 
half of the ear of a cat, and to let the blood drop on 
the part affected — a practice which is evidently a 
survival of the primitive notion that a living sacrifice 
appeased the wrath of God. 

Fits, — Numerous indeed have been the charms in- 
vented for those suffering from this malady, and in 
many cases they are "marvellously mystical withal." 
Thus that little animal the mole has been in request, 
as the following mystic prescription will show. A 
gentleman residing in 1865, on the border ground of 
Norfolk and Suffolk, was one day asked by a neigh- 
bour to catch a live mole, as " her darter's little 
gal was subject to fits, and she had been told that if 
she got a live mole, cut the tip of his nose off, and let 
nine drops bleed on to a lump of sugar, and gave that 
to the child, 'twas a sartin cure." Here again we have 
the same notion of a sacrifice, one which, it may be 
noticed, underlies many of the charms of this kind. 
A Devonshire remedy is to go into a church at mid- 
nio^ht and to walk three times round the Communion 



COMMON AILMENTS. 155 

table, while many single women wear a silver ring 
on the wedding-ring finger, made out of sixpences 
which have been begged from six young bachelors. 

Gout. — The periodical attacks of this disease have 
from the earliest times been subjected to the influence 
of charms, blackberries being considered by the Greeks 
a good specific. Culpeper has bequeathed to us a 
curious remedy. He says, ^^ Take an owl, pull off 
her feathers, and pull out her guts ; salt her well for 
a week, then put her into a pot, and stop it close, and 
put her into an oven, that so she may be brought into 
a mummy, which, being beat into powder and mixed 
with boar's gi^ease, is an excellent remedy for gout, 
anointing the grieved place by the fire.'' The german- 
der speedwell has been esteemed highly efficacious, 
and the Emperor Charles Y. is reported to have 
derived benefit from it. 

Headache. — Cures to alleviate this tiresome pain 
are numberless. Mrs. Latham mentions what is 
considered by the Sussex peasantry a sure way of 
avoiding it in the spring, a piece of superstition we 
have already noticed: ^^No hair, either cut or 
combed from the head, must be thrown carelessly 
away, lest some bird should find it and carry it 
off, in which case the person's head v>^ould ache 
during all the time that the bird was busy working 
the spoil into its nest. \ I knew how it would be,' 
exclaimed a servant, ^ when I saw that bird fly away 
with a bit of my hair that blew out of the window this 



156 DOMESTIC FOLK-LOHE. 

morning when I was dressing ; I knew I should have 
a clapping headache, and so I have.' " In some counties 
the common corn-poppy is called " headache/' from the 
cephalalgic tendency of the scent. 

HydropJwhia, — From the most remote period no 
disease, perhaps, has possessed such a curious history, 
or been invested with so many superstitions as hydro- 
phobia, and the countless remedies suggested for its 
cure form an important chapter in folk-medicine. In 
tracing back its history, we find that it was not only 
regarded by our ancestors with the same horror as 
now-a-days, but that every conceivable device was 
resorted to for removing its fatal effects. Thus, Pliny 
relates the case of a Homan soldier who was cured by 
the dog-rose, a remedy said to have been revealed to 
the man's mother in a dream. Among sundry other 
remedies he enumerates the hair of a man's head, 
goose-grease, fuller's earth, colewort, fish-brine, tfec, as 
applications to the wounds. The favourite cure of 
Dioscorides was hellebore, and Galen's principal one 
was the river-crab. Sucking the wound seems also 
to have been considered efiicacious. Passing on to 
modern times, the extraordinary remedies still em- 
ployed are a convincing proof of the extent to which 
superstition occasionally reaches. The list, indeed, is 
not an inviting one, consisting amongst other things 
of the liver of a male goat, the tail of a shrew-mouse, 
the brain and comb of a cock, the worm under the 
tongue of a mad dog, horse-dung, pounded ants, and 
cuckoo soup. It may seem, too, incredible to us that 



COMMON AILMENTS. 157 

less than a century ago the suffocation of the wretched 
victim was not unfrequently resorted to, and instances 
of this barbarous practice may be found in the 
periodical literature of bygone years. Thus, in The 
Dublin Chronicle (28th October, 1798), the follow- 
ing circumstances are recorded : — '' A fine boy, aged 
fourteen, was bitten by a lady's lap-dog near Dublin. 
In about two hours the youth was seized with 
convulsive fits, and shortly after with hydrophobia; 
and, notwithstanding every assistance, his friends 
were obliged to smother him between two feather 
beds." In the year 1712, four persons were tried at 
York Assizes for smothering a boy, who had been 
bitten by a mad dog, on a similar plea as that 
uttered by Othello : — 

** I that am cruel am yet merciful : 
I would not have thee linger in thy pain." 

As recently as the year 1867 this mode of death 
was put into execution in the town of Greenfield, 
Michigan. A little girl having been seized with 
hydrophobia, a consultation was held by the phy- 
sicians, and as soon as it had been decided by them 
that she could not recover, her parents put an end 
to her sufi'erings by smothering her to death. The 
folk-lore of this disease is most extensive, and as our 
space is limited we cannot do better than recommend 
our readers to consult Mr. Dolan's capital volume on 
"Rabies, or Hydrophobia," which contains an ex- 
cellent description of the antiquity and history of this 
cruel complaint, and of superstitions which surround it. 



158 DOMESTIC FOLK-LOHE. 

Hysteria. — This disorder, which assumes so many 
deceptive forms, was formerly known as ^' the mother," 
or *' hysterica passio," an allusion to which occurs in 
King Lear (Act ii., sc. 4), where Shakespeare re- 
presents the king as saying, 

" 0, how this mother swells up toward my heart! 
Hysterica passio ! down, thou climbing sorrow, 
Thy element's below !" 

Some of the charms used for its cure are much 
the same as those employed in cases of epilepsy^ a 
favourite one being the wearing of a ring made of a 
certain number of silver pieces obtained from persons 
of the opposite sex. 

Jaundice, — Many of the remedies recommended 
for this complaint are not of a very agreeable kind, 
as, for instance, the following one mentioned by a 
correspondent of Notes and Queries, first, as having 
been resorted to in a Dorsetshire parish, where the 
patient was ordered to eat nine lice on a piece of 
bread and butter. One popular charm in days gone 
by, and certainly not of a very refined character, was 
known as the cure by transplantation, and consisted 
in burying in a dunghill an odd number of cakes 
made of ashes and other ingredients. 

Lameness, — Sleeping on stones, on a particular 
night, is an old method of curing lameness practised 
in Cornwall. 



COMMON AILMENTS. 159 

Lumhago. — In Dundee it is customary to wear 
round the loins as a cure for lumbago a hank of yarn 
which has been charmed by a wise woman, and girls 
may be seen with single threads of the same round the 
head as an infallible specific for tic-douloureux. 

Measles. — In the quarterly return of the mar- 
riages, births, and deaths registered in the provinces, 
&c., in Ireland, published in October, 1878, we find 
the following extraordinary cure for measles, ad- 
ministered with what results will be seen : — ^* Sixty- 
three cases of measles appear on the medical relief 
register for past quarter, but this does not represent a 
third of those afiected, the medical officers being only 
called in when the usual amount of local nostrums 
had been tried without efiect. Every case seen 
suffered from violent diarrhoea, caused by the ad- 
ministration of a noxious compound called crooke. 
This consists of a mixture of porter, sulphur, and 
the excrement of the sheep collected in the fields. 
Every unfortunate child that showed any symptom 
of measles was compelled to drink large quantities 
of this mixture. All ordinary remedies failed to 
stop the diarrhoea thus produced, in many cases the 
children nearly dying from exhaustion.' Kepulsive 
as this piece of folk-medicine is, yet it is only 
one of a most extensive class of the same kind, 
many being most revolting. It is difficult to con- 
ceive how either ignorance or superstition could 
tolerate any practice of so senseless and indelicate .a 
nature. 



160 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

Paralysis. — One of the popular charms for this 
disease is the same as that used in the case of epilepsy, 
namely, a silver ring made from money solicited from a 
certain number of persons. Cowslips, too, have been 
esteemed highly efficacious, and have on this account 
been termed " Herbse Paralysis '' by medical writers. 
For the same reason they are called " Palsyworts " in 
many country places. 

Rheumatism. — Professors of the healing art have 
advised the sufferer to carry about in his pocket 
the right fore-foot of a female hare, while others 
consider a potato equally efficacious. A Cornish 
cure is to crawl under a bramble which has formed 
a second root in the ground, or to drink water in 
which a thunder-stone has been boiled. There is, 
also, a strong belief that a galvanic ring^ as it is 
called, worn on the finger will serve as an excellent 
preservative. "A large number of persons," says 
Mr. Clyde in his '^ Norfolk Garland," '* may be 
seen with a clumsy-looking silver ring, which has a 
piece of copper let into the inside, and this, though 
in constant contact throughout, is supposed (aided by 
the moisture of the hand) to keep up a gentle but 
continual galvanic current, and so alleviate rheu- 
matism." A Sussex remedy is to place the bellows 
in the sufferer's chair that he may lean against them, 
and so have his rheumatism charmed away. 

Spasms. — The belief in the curative powers of 
the form of the cross still holds its sway in the 



COMMON AILMENTS. 161 

popular mind, and in the case of spasms, or that pain- 
ful state of the feet in which they are said '' to sleep," 
it is used under an impression that it allays the pain. 

Small-pox. — The curative properties attributed to 
some colours is illustrated by the treatment formerly 
employed in cases of small-pox. Thus, red bed-cover- 
ings were thought to bring the pustules to the surface 
of the body, and the patient was recommended to look 
at red substances. Purple dye, pomegranate seeds, 
or other red ingredients were dissolved in his drink, 
with the idea that as red is the colour of the blood, 
so disorders of the blood system should be treated 
by red. The renowned English physician, John 
of Gaddesden, introduced the practice into this 
country, and tried its efficacy on one of the sons 
of King Edward I., adding to his report, ^^et est 
bona cura." Fried mice are considered in some 
counties a good specific for this complaint, it being 
thought necessary by some that they should be 
fried alive. 

Sprain. — Many of the charms practised in an 
accident of this kind are of a semi-religious character, 
and of a not very reverent form. Thus, to cure a 
sprain, a thread called the ^^ wresting-thread " is tied 
round the injured part, aftei* which the following 
formula is repeated : — 

" Oar Saviour rade, 
His fore-foot slade, 

Our Saviour liprhted down ; 



162 DOMESTIC FOLK-LOEE. 

Sinew to sinew — joint to joint, 
Blood to blood, and bone to bone, 
Mend thou in God's name." 

This incantation, wliicli, it has been suggested, may 
have originated in some legend of Christ's life, is 
frequently mentioned in the witch trials of the early 
part of the seventeenth century. 

Sty, — To prevent or cure this disorder, known in 
some places as " west," it is customary on the first 
sight of the new moon to seize a black cat by the 
tail, and after pulling from it one hair, to rub the tip 
nine times over the pustule. As this charm, however, 
is often attended with sundry severe scratches, a gold 
ring has been substituted, and is said to be equally 
beneficial. This superstition is alluded to by Beaumont 
and Fletcher, in the Jiad Lovers (Act v., sc. 4) : — 

** 1 have a sty here, Chilax. 

Chil. I have no gold to cure it, not a penny." 

Earrings are considered a good remedy for sore 
eyes ; and in districts where the teasle is grown for 
use in the manufacture of broadcloth, a preservative 
against them is found in the water which collects in 
the hollow cups of that plant. Pure rain-water is 
reported to be another infallible remedy. This must 
be carefully collected in a clean open vessel during 
the month of June, and if preserved in a bottle 
will, it is said, remain pure for any length of 
time. 



COMMON AILMENTS. 163 

Tlirush, — There is a popular notion that a person 
must have this complaint once in his life, either at 
his birth or death. Norfolk nurses pi'efer to see it 
in babies, on the plea that it is healthy, and makes 
them feed more freely ; but if it appears in a sick 
adult person he is generally given over as past re- 
covery. Some of the remedies for this disease are 
curious, as, for instance, a Cornish one, which recom- 
mends the child to be taken fasting on three con- 
secutive mornings, " to have its mouth blown into " 
by a posthumous child. In Devonshire the parent is 
advised to take three rushes from any running stream, 
and to pass them separately through the mouth of the 
infant. Afterwards the rushes should be thro^vn into 
the stream again, and as the current bears them away, 
so will the thrush, it is said, depart from the child. 
Should this prove ineffectual, the parent is recom- 
mended to capture the nearest duck that can be 
found, and to place its beak, wide open, within the 
mouth of the sufferer. As the child inhales the cold 
breath of the duck, the disease, we are told, will 
gradually disappear. A further charm consists in 
reading the eighth Psalm over the child's head three 
times every day on three days in the week for three 
successive weeks. 

Toothache, — This common ailment, which produces 
so much discomfort, unfortunately rarely meets with 
a degree of sympathy proportionate to the agony 
it occasions, but has nevertheless been honoured 
witli an extensive folk-lore ; and the quaint remedies 



164 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

that superstitious fancy has suggested for its cure 
would occupy a small volume if treated with any- 
thing like fulness. Selecting some of the best 
known, we may mention one which, in point of 
efficacy, is considered by many as unsurpassed, 
namely, a tooth taken from the mouth of a corpse, 
and worn round the neck as an amulet. Occa- 
sionally a double- nut is carried in the pocket for 
the same purpose. There is a belief, too, that 
the possession of a Bible or a Prayer Book, 
with the following legend written in it, is an 
effectual charm: — ^^All glory, all glory, all glory 
be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the 
Holy Ghost. As our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ 
was walking in the Garden of Gethsemane, He 
saw Peter weeping. He called him unto Him, and 
said, * Peter, why weepest thou 1 ' Peter answered 
and said, 'Lord, I am grievously tormented with 
pain — the pain of my tooth.' Our Lord answered 
and said, * If thou wilt believe in Me, and My words 
abide with thee, thou shalt never feel any more pain 
in thy tooth.' Peter said, 'Lord, I believe; help 
Thou mine unbelief.' In the name, &c., God grant 
M. N. ease from the pain in his tooth." These charm 
formulas, which constitute an important element in 
folk-lore literature, are still extensively used in this 
country to arrest or cure some bodily disease ; 
and they are interesting as being in most cases 
modified forms of those used by our Anglo-Saxon 
ancestors. 



COMMON AILMENTS. 165 

Typhus Fever. — Even for so dangerous a disease 
as typhus fever, our peasantry do not hesitate to 
practise their own remedies. One consists in applying 
the skii't of a sheep to the soles of the feet, and 
keeping it there for several hours, under a notion 
that this will draw away the fever from the head. 
Some years ago a clergyman in Norfolk, whilst visit- 
ing a poor man suffering from this complaint, found 
that his wife had placed the spleen of a cow on 
the soles of his feet, having been assured that it 
was an efficacious remedy. There is another story 
that the rector of a Norfolk parish was solicited 
for the loan of the church plate to lay on the stomach 
of a child, which was much swelled from some mesen- 
teric disease, this being held to be an excellent remedy 
in such cases. 

Warts, — These have been regarded as prognostica- 
tions of good or bad luck according to their position on 
the body, those on the right hand foreboding riches, 
whereas one on the face is believed to indicate 
troubles of various kinds. It would be difficult to 
enumerate the many methods that have been adopted 
to charm or drive them away, most persons disliking 
these ugly little excrescences, and willingly resorting 
to any means, however eccentric, to lose them. As 
in the case of so many other charms, most of those 
used also for this complaint are of the nature of a 
sacrifice, the warts being transferred to a substitute. 
Thus, the person is recommended to count his warts, 
to wrap in a piece of paper a pebble for each, and 



166 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

then to throw the parcel away, in the hope that its 
unfortunate finder will get them. Another remedy 
is to open the warts to the quick, and to rub 
them with the juice of a sour apple, which should 
afterwards be buried,^ and as it decomposes the warts 
will die away. Some rub the waii; with eels' blood. 
and others believe in the efficacy of the ashen tree. 
After picking each wart with a pin, they stick it into 
the bark, and repeat this rhyme : — 

" Ashen tree, ashen tree, 
Pray buy these warts of me." 

An Irish servant's formula is to pass his hand over 
the warts, making the sign of the cross, at the same 
time bidding them, in God's name, depart and trouble 
him no more. He then gives some one a slip of j)aper, 
on which is written ^' Jesus Christ, that died upon the 
cross, put my warts away,'' to drop by the roadside. 
It is thought that as it perishes, so, too, will the 
warts vanish. Another plan is to steal a piece of 
raw meat, rub the warts with it, and throw it away, 
a charm mentioned by Southey in *^ The Doctor." 
Other remedies are the juice of ants, spiders' webs, 
pigs' blood, while tying a horse-hair round each wart 
is considered efficacious. Another method is to blow 
on the warts nine times when the moon is full ; 
and in some places boys take a new pin, cross the 
warts with it nine times, and cast it over the left 
shoulder. These, then, are some of the principal 
cures for warts, most of them, as we have already 
said, belonging to the category of vicarious charms, 



CO>rMON AILMENTS. 167 

which have at all times been one of the favourite 
resources of poor mortals in their difficulties — such 
charms being sacrifices made on the principle so widely 
adopted — Quifacit loer aliitmfacit "per se. 

Wen, — The same notion of vicariousness enters 
into the cures recommended for wens, one of the 
most efficacious being the touch of a dead man's 
hand. And Grose informs us how, in days gone 
by, children were brought by their nurses to be 
stroked with the hands of dead criminals, even whilst 
they were hanging on the gallows. In Northampton- 
shire numbers of sufferers were in the habit of con- 
gregating round the gallows, in order to receive '^ the 
dead-stroke," the notion being that as the hand of the 
man mouldered away, so the w^en would by degrees 
decrease. In Gloucestershire an ornamental necklace 
made of plaited hair from a horse's tail is thought to 
be a good remedy. 

Whooping -Cough. — This common enemy of child- 
hood has, from time immemorial, afforded ample 
opportunity to the superstitiously-inclined to devise 
sundry charms for its cure, of which the following are 
a few : — Passing the patient three times under the 
belly and three times over the back of a donkey ; or 
let the parent of the afflicted child catch a spider, 
and hold it over the head of the child, repeating three 
times : — 

*' Spider, as you waste away, 
Whooping-cough no longer stay." 



168 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

The spider must then be hung up in a bag over the 
mantlepiece, and when it has dried up the cough 
will have disappeared. There is a notion in Cheshire 
that this complaint can be cured by holding a toad 
or frog for a few moments with its head within 
the child's mouth, whereas in Norfolk the patient 
is advised either to drink some milk which a ferret 
has lapped, or to allow himself to be dragged three 
times round a gooseberry bush or bramble, and then 
three times again after three days' interval. In 
Sussex the excrescence often found on the briar-rose, 
and known as the ^*E.obin Redbreast's Cushion," is 
worn as an amulet ; and in Suffolk, if several 
children in a family are taken ill, some of the hair 
of the oldest child is cut into small pieces, put into 
some milk, and the mixture given to its brothers 
and sisters to drink. Some, again, procure hair 
from the dark cross on the back of a donkey, and 
having placed it in a bag, hang it round the child's 
neck. A Scotch remedy is to place a piece of red 
flannel round the patient's neck ; the virtue residing, 
says Mr. Napier, not in the flannel but in the red 
colour, red having been a colour symbolical of 
triumph and victory over all enemies. 

As may be seen, therefore, from the extensive 
use of charm-remedies in household medicine, the 
physician's province has been assailed by the wide- 
spread belief in such imaginary remedies. Indeed, 
those who believe in the prevention and cure of disease 
by supernatural means are far more numerous than 



MISCELLANEOUS HOUSEHOLD LORE. 169 

one would imagine, having their representatives even 
among the ^higher classes. However much we may 
ridicule the superstitious notions of our rural pea- 
santry, or speak with compassion of the African negro 
who carries about hi:ii some amulet as a preservative 
against disease or as a safeguard against any danger 
that may befall him, yet we must admit that there 
is in England also a disposition to retain, with more 
or less veneration, those old-world notions which in 
the time of our forefathers constituted, as it were, 
so many articles of faith. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

MISCELLANEOUS HOUSEHOLD LORE. 

Horse-shoes— Precautions against "VVitcli craft — The Charmer — 
Second Sight — Ghosts— Dreams— Nightmare. 

The belief in witchcraft, which in years gone by was 
so extensively entertained, has not yet died out, and 
in many of our country villages it is regarded as one 
of those secret dangers to which every home is more 
or less exposed. Hence we find various devices still 
resorted to for the purpose of counteracting the sup- 
posed hurtful influences of this baneful power, instances 
of which we subjoin. Thus, according to a common 
idea, one of the best preservatives is a horse-shoe nailed 



170 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

to the threshold. The reason of this is said to be that 
Mars, the god of war, and the war-horse, was thought to 
be an enemy to Saturn, who, according to a mediaeval 
idea, was the liege lord of witches. Thus, iron 
instruments of any kind have been said to keep 
witches at bay, a superstition which has been traced 
back to the time of the Romans, who drove nails into 
the walls of their houses as an antidote against the 
plague. Mr. Napier says that he has seen the horse-shoe 
in large beer-shops in London, and was present in the 
parlour of one of these when an animated discussion 
arose as to whether it was most effective to have the 
shoe nailed behind the door or upon the first step of 
the door. Both positions had their advocates, and 
instances of extraordinary luck were recounted as 
having attended them. 

In Lancashire, where there are, perhaps, more 
superstitions connected with this subject than in any 
other county of England, we find numerous traditions 
relating to the evil actions of the so-called witches in 
former years, many of which have become household 
stories among the peasants. At the present day the 
good housewife puts a hot iron into the cream during 
the process of churning to expel the witch from the 
churn ; and dough in preparation for the baker is 
protected by being marked with the figure of a cross. 
In some places a '' lucky stone " — a stone with a hole 
through it — is worn as an amulet, and crossed straws 
and knives laid on the floor are held in high repute. 
A belief, too, which was once very prevalent, and 
even still lingers on, was that the power of evil ceased 



MISCELLANEOUS HOUSEHOLD LORE. 171 

as soon as blood was drawn from the witch. An 
instance of this superstition occurred some years ago 
in a Cornish village, when a man was summoned 
before the bench of magistrates and fined for having 
assaulted the plaintiff and scratched her with a pin. 
Not many years ago a young girl in delicate health 
living in a village near Exeter was thought to have 
been bewitched by an old woman of that place, and, 
according to the general opinion, the only chance 
of curing her was an application of the witch's 
blood. Consequently the girl's friends laid wait one 
day for the poor old woman, and scratching her with 
a nail till the blood flowed, collected the blood. This 
they carried home, and smeared the girl with it in 
the hope that it would insure recovery Curious to 
say, she finally got well, an event which, it is need- 
less to add, was attributed to this charm. It is still 
thought by many that witchcraft, like hydroj)hobia, 
is contagious, and that the person, if only slightly 
scratched by a witch, rapidly becomes one. The 
faculty of witchcraft is also said to be hereditary, and 
in some places families are pointed out as possessing 
this peculiarity. Again, witches are supposed to have 
the power of changing their shape and resuming it 
again at will, a notion which was very popular in past 
years, the cat's and the toad's being the forms they 
were thought to assume. Hence the appearance of a 
toad on the doorstep is taken as a certain sign that 
the house is under evil influence, and the poor rep- 
tile is often subjected to some cruel death. Cats, 
also, were formerly exposed to rough usage, one 



172 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

method being to enclose them with a quantity of soot 
in wooden bottles suspended on a line. The person 
who succeeded in beating out the bottom of the 
bottle as he run under it and yet escaping the con- 
tents was the hero of Lhe sport, a practice to which 
Shakespeare alludes in Much Ado about Nothing, where 
Benedick says : — 

" Hang me in a bottle like a cat and shoot at me." 

It is only natural, too, that in Macbeth, Shake- 
speare, in his description of the witches, should have 
associated them with the cat, their recognised 
agent. 

Another important character whose supernatural 
powers are still credited is the ** charmer.'^ She is 
generally an elderly woman of good reputation, and 
supposed to be gifted with extraordinary powers, by 
means of which she performs wonderful feats of 
skill. By her incantations and mysterious ceremonies 
she stops blood, cures all manner of diseases, and is, 
in short, regarded as almost a miracle-worker. At 
the same time, however, it must not be imagined that 
she exercises her power gratuitously, as oftentimes 
her charges are very high, and it is only by patient 
saving that the poor can accumulate enough to satisfy 
her exorbitant demands. This kind of superstition 
has been already incidentally alluded to in the 
chapter on " Common Ailments ; " and it is one that 
still holds its ground in our country districts. These 
supposed charmers, however, do not always make a 



MISCELLANEOUS HOUSEHOLD LORE. 173 

trade of their art ; for, on tlie contrary, it is supposed 
by some of tliem that any offer of pecuniary remunera- 
tion would break the spell, and render the charm of 
no avail. 

Again, there is still an extensive belief in "second 
sight,'' certain persons being thought to possess the 
faculty of peeping into futurity, and revealing future 
events to their fellow-creatures. Many of the High- 
landers lay claim to this power, which was called by 
the ancient Gaels '* shadow-sight." 

" Nor less availed his optic sleight, 
And Scottish gift of second-sight." 

Sometimes, says Mr. ISTapier, the person fell into 
a trance, " in which state he saw visions ; at other 
times the visions were seen without the trance con- 
dition. Should the seer see in a vision a certain 
person dressed in a shroud, this betokened that the 
death of that person would surely take place within a 
year. Should such a vision be seen in the morning, 
the person seen would die before that evening ; should 
such a vision be seen in the afternoon, the person seen 
would die before next night ; but if the vision were 
seen late in the evening, there was no particular time 
of death intimated, further than that it would take 
place within the year. Again, if the shroud did not 
cover the whole body, the fulfilment of the vision was 
at a great distance. If the vision were that of a man 
with a woman standing at his left hand, then that 
woman would be that man's wife, although they may 
both at the time of the vision be married to others." 



174 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

The case is related of a man living near Blackpool 
who foretold death and evil events from his visions. 
Men of superior ability were credulous enough to 
visit him, and to give implicit faith to his marvellous 
stories. 

A species of superstition that may be said to reign 
supreme in almost every home is the belief in ghosts, 
there being few households that do not contain those 
who believe in ghostly visitants. In this respect, 
therefore, we are not superior to our less instructed 
forefathers whose experiences have been transmitted 
to us in many of those weird and thrilling stories 
which are to be found recorded in many of our old 
county histories. Indeed, there is scarcely a village 
in England that does not boast of the proud distinc- 
tion of having its haunted house or spot. Hence as 
nightfall approaches with its sombre hues of darkness, 
few persons can be found bold enough to visit such 
mysterious localities, for — 

" Grey superstition's whisper dread, 
Debars the spot to vulgar tread." 

Although many of these grotesque stories which have 
been from time to time associated with certain old 
houses are simply legendary and destitute of any 
truth, yet it cannot be denied that while occasion- 
ally causing fear even to the strong-minded they 
have acted most injuriously upon the credulous and 
superstitious. According to an old fancy, ghosts of 
every description vanish at cock-crow, in allusion to 



MISCELLANEOUS HOUSEHOLD LORE. 175 

which Shakespeare makes the ghost of Hamlet's 
father vanish at this season : — 



" It faded on the crowing of the cock." 

One night, however, in the year has been said to be 
entirely free from spiritual manifestations of every 
kind — namely Christmas Eve — an idea to which 
Marcellus refers, who, speaking of the ghost, says : — 

" Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes 
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, 
The bird of dawning singeth all night long, 
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad ; 
The nights are wholesome ; then no planets strike, 
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, 
So hallow' d and so gracious is the time.'* 

But on other days of the year, every noise at night, 
however trivial, which cannot be satisfactorily ex- 
plained by inquisitive minds, is thought by tli6 
superstitious to indicate that spirits are walking 
abroad ; such illogical persons forgetting hoAV in the 
stillness of the night sounds, which at other times 
would pass unnoticed, attract attention, and thus 
assume an exaggerated importance. In this way the 
whistling of the wind, the creaking of the floor, and 
a host of other natural noises have in the deceptive 
hours of midnight terrified their nervous victim, and 
filled the overwrought fancy with the most alarming 
delusions. 

An amusing volume might be written showing how 



176 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

most of the ghost stories connected with so-called 
haunted houses have arisen. Thus, as Mrs. Latham 
points out in her '^ West Sussex Superstitions," there 
is very little doubt but that the ghosts formerly seen 
wandering in blue flajiies, near lonely houses on the 
coast, " were of an illicit class of spirits, raised by 
the smugglers in order to alarm and drive all others 
but their accomplices from their haunts." On one 
occasion, for instance, the unearthly noises heard 
night after night in a house at Kottingdean caused 
such alarm among the servants, that they all gave 
warning, when one night the noises ceased, and 
soon afterwards a gang of smugglers who had fallen 
into the hands of the police confessed to having 
made a secret passage from the beach close by the 
house, and said that, wishing to induce the occupiers 
to abandon it, they had been in the habit of rolling 
at the dead of night tub after tub of spirits up the 
passage, and so caused it to be reported that the 
place was haunted. 

Ghosts are said to be especially fond of walking 
abroad on certain nights, the chief of these being St. 
Mark's Eve, Midsummer Eve, and Hallowe'en. Hence 
various methods have been resorted to for the purpose 
of invoking them with a view of gaining an insight into 
futurity, love-sick maidens, as we have said, seizing 
these golden opportunities for gaining information 
about their absent lovers. It must not be supposed, too, 
that apparitions are confined to the spirits of the de- 
parted, as throughout the country there are the most 
eccentric traditions of headless animals having been 



MISCELLANEOUS HOUSEHOLD LORE. 177 

seen at sundry times rushing madly about at night- 
time. 

Leaving, however, the subject of ghosts, we find in 
the next place an extensive folk-lore associated with 
dreams. We have already incidentally alluded to the 
many divinations practised for the sake of acquiring 
information by means of them on certain subjects, 
but we may further note that dreams are by some 
supposed occasionally to intimate not only future 
events, but things which are actually happening at 
a distance. Hence a ** Dictionary of Dreams '* 
has been framed whereby the inquirer, if he be 
credulously disposed, can learn the meaning and 
signification of any particular dream which he 
may recollect. Thus, it is said that to dream of 
death denotes happiness and long life, but to dream 
of gathering a nosegay is unlucky, signifying that 
our best and fairest hopes shall wither away like 
flowers in a nosegay. Dreaming about balls, dances, 
&c. , indicates coming good fortune ; and thus we are 
told that those — 

** \VTio dream of being at a ball 
No cause have they for fear ; 
For soon will they united be 
To those they hold most dear." 

To give one further illustration, to dream that one 
is walking in a garden, and that the trees are bare and 
fruitless, is a very bad omen, being said to indicate 
that one's friends will either become poor or forsake 
one. If the garden, on the other hand, should be in 

M 



178 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

bloom, it is a propitious sign. Portents of approach- 
ing death are said to be received through dreams ; and 
we will quote an example of this from Mr. Henderson, 
which happened, it is affirmed, some years ago in the 
family of an Irish bishop : — ''A little boy came down- 
stairs one morning, saying, ' Oh, mamma, I have had 
such a nice dream. Somebody gave me such a pretty 
box, and I am sure it was for me, for there was 
my name on it. Look, it was just like this ; ' and, 
taking up a slate and pencil, the child drew the 
shape of a coffin. The parents gazed at one another 
in alarm, not lessened by the gambols of the child, 
who frolicked about in high health and spirits. The 
father was obliged to go out that morning, but he 
begged the mother to keep the child in her sight 
through the day. She did so, till, while she was dress- 
ing to go out in her carriage, the little boy slipped 
away to the stables, where he begged the coachman to 
take him by his side while he drove to the house door, 
a thing he had often done before. On this occasion, 
however, the horses were restive, the driver lost 
control over them, and the child was flung off and 
killed on the spot." Shylock, it may be remembered, 
in the Merchant of Venice^ referring to his dream, 
says : — 

" There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest, 
For I did dream of money -tags to-night." 

Many curious charms are still practised to ward off 
that unpleasant sensation popularly known as night- 
mare, which both in this and other countries has 



MISCELLANEOUS HOUSEHOLD LORE. 179 

given rise to a variety of superstitions. Accord- 
ing to one old notion, this disagreeable feeling was 
produced by some fairy, under a disguised form, 
visiting the person, and worrying him while asleep 
by certain mischievous pranks. Thus, in Germany, 
the nightmare is said to appear at times in the shape 
of a mouse, a weasel, or a toad, and occasionally, too, 
in the form of a cat. One German story relates how 
a joiner was, night by night, much plagued with the 
nightmare, when he at last saw it steal into his room 
about midnight in the form of a cat. Having at 
once stopped up the hole through which the cat had 
entered, he lost no time in seizing the animal and 
nailing it by one paw to the ground. Next morning, 
however, much to his horror and surprise, he dis- 
covered a handsome young lady with a nail driven 
through her hand. He accordingly married her, 
but one day he uncovered the hole which he had 
stopped up, whereupon she instantly escaped through 
it in the shape of a cat, and never returned. There 
are numerous stories of a similar kind, in most cases 
the sequel being the same. Among the charms still 
in use as a preservative against nightmare may be 
mentioned a stone with a natural hole in it hung 
over the sleeper, or a knife laid under the foot of 
the bedstead, both being considered of equal efficacy. 
In Lancashire the peasantry believe that nightmare 
appears in the form of a dog, and they try to 
counteract its influence by placing their shoes under 
tlie bed with the toe upwards, on retiring to rest. 
Not very long ago, too, at the West Riding Court at 



180 DOMESTIC FOLK-LORE. 

Bradford, in a case of a husband and wife who had 
quarrelled, the woman stated that the reason why she 
kept a coal-rake in her bedroom was that she suflfered 
from nightmare, and had been informed that the rake 
would keep ifc away. The best charm after all, 
however, for this common disorder is to be careful 
that one's digestive organs are not upset by incautious 
suppers eaten just before retiring to rest. 

It only remains for us, in conclusion, to add once 
more that the preceding pages are not intended to be 
by any means exhaustive, our object having been to 
give a brief and general survey of that extensive folk- 
lore which has, in the course of years, woven itself 
around the affairs of home-life. However much this 
may be ridiculed on the plea of its being the outcome 
of credulous belief, yet it constitutes an important 
element in our social life, which the historian in years 
to come will doubtless use when he studies the character 
of the English people in this and bygone centuries. 



INDEX. 



Abqartts, Letter of Christ to, 7 
Ague, Chaniis against, 149 
Apes, Leading, 43. 
Apple-peel as a love-test, 30 
Apple-tree blooming twice, a sign of 

Death, 52 
Apron, Superstitions about, 84 « 
Articles of Dress, 81 
*• Arval " and '* Arval Bread," 64 
Aryan Myths and Legends, 16 
Astrology, Divination by, 144 . 
Auguries gathered from Shoes, 89 

Baby axd Kittkn, 8 

Banns, Superstitions about putting up, 
43 . 

Baptism, how rendered propitious in 
Scotland, 19 * 

Effect of, on Children, 18 » 

Barring out, 27 

Addison's conduct at, 27 

Beards, Dyeing of, 76 • 

Bed, Folk-lore about, 118 

Position of, 119 

Bellows, Superstition about, 120, 160 

Bent piece of money, 133 

Best man's prize, 46 

Bible and Key, 135 

Birds, Presages of Death by, 51 

Birth and Infancy, Folk-lore relating 
to, 2 

•* Bishopping," good for rheumatism, 
21 

Bishop's Left Hand, Superstition re- 
specting, 20 

Biting the Glove, 95 

" Black Ox " in Scotland, 51 

Blade-bone, Divination by, 139 

Bleeding of the Nose, 68, 150 

as a sign of love, 68 

Blue Vein across Nose, 69 

Brake or Fern, Divination by, 31 

Bread, Sui)erstitions about, 1U7 

Breaking Egg-shells, 108 

Bride and Looking-glass, 113 

Sun shining on, 40 

Brides of Elizabethan Dramas, 39 

Bride's Stockings, 86 

Broom left in Room after Sweeping, 
126 

Burial of Dead among Greeks, 63 

"Burial without the Sanctuary," 62 

Burn or Scald, 151 

Burning Hair, Omens from, 74 

tail of Coat, &c., 84 

Butter-dock, Scattering Seeds of, 35 

C-EXA FERALIS OF ROMANS, 64 

Candle in Ghost's Hand, 54 
Candles, Omens from, 130 
Carbuncle in Ring, 96 



Cards, Divination by, 144 

Carrying the Dead with the Sun, 61 

Casting Lot, Divination by, 146 

Cat, Sneezing of, 123 

Cats and Toads, Form of, assumed by 
Witches, 177 

Sucking Child's Breath, 13 ^ 

Caul, Superstition about, 3, 4 • 

Hood's Ballad about, 3 » 

Price paid for, 4 , 

Chairs, Superstitions about, 111, 118 

Changelings, Superstiticms about, 4 

Luther's remarks on, 4 » 

Character of Book, 180 

Charm-remedies, 148 

Charmer, her power, 172 

Charms against changing Children, 5 

to detect Changelings, 5 

against stumbling, 124 

Cheeks, Itching of, 77 « 

Cheese given by Bride, 42 

Child Dying unchristened, 18 

Childhood's Folk-lore, 16 

"Chime Hours," Birth at, 2 

Chiromancy, or Palmistrj', 140 

Christmas Eve, Divinations on, SI 

Christ's College, Cambridge, Fellow- 
ships at, 103 

Churchyard Lore, 61 

Cinderella, a Nature-myth, 17 » 

" Clock-falling," 117 

striking thirteen, 54 

losing stroke, 55 

Clothes of the Dead, 83 

Cock-crowing at Night, 52 

" Connoisseur," Love-tivsts in, 29 

Corn in Marriage Ceremony, 44 

" Corpse-candles " in Wales, M < 

Counting one's Gains, 133 

Covering Looking-glass at Death, 113 

Cramp, Charms au'ainst, 151 

"Creeling" the Bridegroom in Scot- 
land, 48 

Crockery, Breaking of, 127 

Cross on Dough, 170 

Crowing Hen, 125 

of a Cock, 138 

Crying at Baptism, 19 

Anecdote regarding, 20 

at Wedding, 40 

Cuckoo's Notes, 32 

First Note heard in Bed, Ominous 

of Illness or Death, 52 

" Cunning Man," 121 

Curious Marriage Customs, 47 

Cutting tiie Nails, 80 

Dactylomaxxy. or Divination by 

Rings, 98 
Dandelion, Divination by, 31 ♦ 
Days of Week, Sneezing on, 123 



182 



INDEX. 



Dead Children cannot rest if Mothers 
fret for them, 15 

Hand, Rubbing with, 78 » 

Anecdotes respecting, 78 

Man's Hand at Bryn Hall, Lanca- 
shire, 79 
Death and Burial, Superstition re- 
specting, 48 

Announced by the Dying, 55 

Bell in Scotland, 67 

Anecdote of Hogg about, 67 

Dee, Dr., and Magic Mirror, 114 
Destiny of Children, how augured in 

Scotland, 19 
Diamond, potent against Poison, 97 
"Dipping," in Bible, 136 
Divination among Children, 26 

by Pins, 100 

of Sex of unborn Infant, 3 

Dog, Howling of, at Death, how caused, 

50 
Doorstep, Lifting Bride over, 42 
Drawing Blood from Witch, 171 
Dreams, What denoted by, 177 
Dutch Parson and Will-o'-the-Wisp, 18 
" Dying Hard," 58 

Ears, Tingling of, 66 »- 

Easter Day, New Clothes on, 82 * 

Ecclesiastical Dignity and Gloves, As- 
sociation of, 94 

Eggs, Divination by, 146 

Superstitions about, 108 

Elder Sister Dancing in Hog's-trough 
at younger Sister's Marriage, 43 

Emerald, and Purity of Thought, 97 

Epilepsv, Remedies for, 152 

Erysipelas, Amulets against, 153 

Evil Eye, 6 > 

in " Satires of Persius," 6 ^ 

Lancashire belief about, 6 "^ 

Exeter Lammas Fair, 94 

Eye, Omens relating to, 70 

" Eye-biting " in Ireland, 7 

Eye-brows, Meeting of, 70 ♦ 

Eyes, Itching of, 70 

Face, or Look-divination, 142 

Fair, Opening of, announced by hang- 
ing out Glove, 94 

Fairy-tales, What embodied in, 16 ♦ 

Feet, Folk-lore about, 80 

Itching of, 80 

" Fetch-lights," 54 

Finger-nails, Superstitions about, 10 • 

in Germany, 10 • 

in Northumberland, 11 ^ 

in Scotland, 11 - •^ 

Fire, Omens and Portents of, 129 

First Teeth, Precautions taken when 
they come out, 10 

' Tooth in Upper Jaw, 8 

Fits, Charms against, 154 

Flat Feet and Bad Temper, 80 

Flinging the Stocking, 85 

Foot going to Sleep, 81 

Fretting Baby, 12 

Friday, an Unlucky Day, 128 * 

Good for Love-omens, 35 • 

Inauspicious for Marrying, 38 • 

Lucky for Marrying in Scotlandj 39 



Funeral Feasts, 64 

Meeting of, by Bride or Bride- 
groom, 40 

Meeting a, 65 

of Unmarried Girl, Custom at, 64 

Furniture Omens, 111 

Garters, Superstitions about, 86* 

Tying I^nots in, SO » 

Gathering Rose on Midsummer Eve, SO 

Getting out of Bed the wrong way, 119 

Ghosts, Belief in, 174 

do not appear on Christmas Eve, 

175 

Favourite Days for appearance of, 

176 

seen by Animals, 50 

Gloucester, Duke of. Born with Teeth, 
9 

Glove, Use of, at Fairs, 95 -^ 

Glove-money, 93 

Gloves, Superstitions about, 92 

Going in at one Door and out at an- 
other at Marriage, 41 

" Going up " at Birth, 8 

Gout, Charms against, 155 ~ 

" Grave Scab," 14 

Remedy for, 14 

Graves, Position of, 63 

Green Yarrow, 31 

Grounds at bottom of Tea-cup, 110 

Hair, Superstitions respectiso, 

Omens from Growth of, 74 ^ 

Sudden Loss of, 74 

Hallowe'en, Divination on, 34"* 
Hands, Emblematic of Character, 77 ' 

Itching of, 77 ♦ 

Headache, Cures for, 155 

Headless Animals, 176 

Helping to Salt, 104 

Hen cackling at Wedding, 42 

Hollow Cinder a Coffin, 129 

Home-life, Superstitions relating to, 

131 
Horoscope in Germany, 143 
Horse-shoes as Amulets, 169 
Hot Iron in Cream, 170 
Household Superstitions, 120 
Howling of a Dog at Night indicative 

of Death, 49 
Human Body, Superstitions about, 65 
Hydroi)hobia, Cures for, 156 
Hysteria, Remedies for, 158 

Idiots cannot sneeze, 123 
Invalid asking for Pigeons, 52 
Itching of the Nose, 68 

" Jack-a-Dandy," 25 
Jackdaw, Omen of Death, 52 
Jacob's Prophecies, 57 
Jaundice, Remedies for, 158 
Jewish Customs respecting Shoes, 90 
June popular for marrj'ing, 37 > 

Keepsake Rings, Colours in,s.9 
Knile, Folk-lore relating to, 105 



IKDEX. 



183 



Knife, Giving away, unlucky, 106 
, Finding, unlucky, 106 

Lady-bird, Divination by, 31 

Lameness, Cure for, 158 

Last Day of Year, Marrying on, m 

Scotland, 39 
Leap-year, Birth in, 3 
Lending Knife to cut Cake, 26 
Long Life, bow to secure, 12 . 
Looking-glass, Fancies about, 112 
Love and Courtship, 28 
Love-tests, 28 

• , whence derived, 29 

" Luck of Edenhall," 116 
" Lucky Stone" as Amulet, 170 
Lucky Stones, 7 
Lumbago, Cure for, 159 

Magicians and Looking glasses, 

114 » 
Magpie using Hair, 74 
Maiden Assize, Gloves at, 93 
Making "the Deazil," 61 
•' Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John," 21 
May Marriages unlucky, 36 ♦ 
Measles, Cure for, 159 
Medicated Rings, 97 
M-edicine Bottles, selling, 134 
Melted Lead, Divination by, 146 
Midsummer Eve, Practices on, 33 
Misfortune not to die in one's Bed, 53 
Moist and dry Hands, 78 
Moles, Omens drawn from, 66 * 
Money and the New Moon, 1S2 

Nails, Signification of, 77 

Necklace of Peony Beads, 10 

New Clothes, Superstitious relating 

to, 82 

Moon ill Looking-glass, 113 

Nicking Schoolmaster's Cane, 26 
Nightmare, Charms against, 178 

, Curious Stories about, 179 

North Side of Church, Burial in, 63 

Nose, Omens relating to, 68 • 

*' Nose out of Joint," and " Paying 

through Nose," 69 - 
Number Thirteen,SuperstitioDS about, 

100, 101 
*' Nutcrack-night," 34 
Nuts and Apples, Divination by, 31 

Odd Numbers, Antipathy to, in 

School Games, 25 
Omens associated with Rings, 97 

of approaching Death, 49 

Onyraancy, or Divination by the 

Finger-nails, 141 
Opal liing, unlucky to wear, 97 
Open Grave at Wedding, 41 
•' Over-looking," Superstitions about, 

71 
Overturning Chair, 111 
Ovid on June Marriasres, 38 
Ox or Cow breaking into Garden, Omen 

of Death, 51 
, Anecdote respecting, 51 

Palmistry, or Divination by the 
Hands, 78 



Paralysis, Charms for, 160 

" Parson's Penny" in Wales, 62 

Picking Broom in Bloom unlucky, 52 

, Anecdote respecting, 53 

Pigeons' Feathers in Bed, 58 

Heart, Divination by, 3-4 

Pin in Candle, 131 

Pins, Superstitions about, 98 » 

in Witchcraft and Sorcery, 99 » 

' , Robbing Bride of, 41 * 

Plants and Petticoats, 85 

in Love-charms, 30 

, Omens of Death derived from, 52 

Poker across Bars of Grate, 129 

Popular Divinations, 134 

Pork, eating Marrow of, 109 

Position of Grave, 63 

Prayers of Poor in Lincolnshire, 22 

, Origin of, 23 

Taught by poor People to their 

Children, 21 
Prevalence of Superstitions, 122 
Prophesying before Death, 57 
Puritans and Wedding-ring, 4Ct 

Rain, Rhymes about, 24 
Rainbow, crossing out, 24 
'•Rattley-bag9,"25 
Rebuilding House fatal, 54 
Red Hair and Beard, 75 * 
Reversing Articles of Dress, 83 
Rheumatism and Shoes, 90 

, Charms against, 160 

Rhymes used by Children, 23 
Rings, Legendary Lore of, 95 « 

as Talismans, 96 , 

of dead Friend, 84 

Rocking empty Cradle, 9 

Rubbing Shoulders with Bride or 

Bridegroom, 41 
Rural Bridegroom and Gloves, 95 

St. Valentine's Day, 32 • 

, Divination on, in Devonshire, 33 * 

Salt on Breast of Corpse, 60 
Salt-spilling, Superstitions about, 103 « 
Seasons admitting or prohibiting 

Matrimony, 38 
Second Sight, 173 
Selling Eggs after dark, 108 
"Shaping" of Wedding Dress for 

Divination, 46 
Shift, Divination by, 30 
Shivering as a portent. 131 
Shoeing-horn and Shakespeare, 91 
Shoe-throwing, 87 

at Weddings, 46 . 

Shoes, Rhymes on, 90 

, Superstitions about, 87 

Shortbread at W^edding, 45 

Sieve and Shears, 137 

•' Sin-eaters" in Scotland, 60 

Sitting above and below the Salt, 105 

cross-legged, 80 

Sleeping on Bones, 8 

Small-pox, Remedies for, 161 

Smith, Mr. G., the Assyriologlst, and 

Dr. Delitzsch, 55 
Snail, Divination by, .32 * 
Snails, Rhymes about, 25 • 
Sneezing and Sneezers, 122 • 



184 



INDEX. 



Snow, Rhymes about, 24 
SorUs Virgiliance, 136 
Sowing Hempseed, 29 
•• Spade-money " in Wales, 62 
Spark in Candle, 130 
Spasms, Cure for, 160 
Spatulamancia, 139 
Specks on the Nails, 79 
Speedwell and Snowdrop. 53 
Spider, Superstitions about, 126 
Spitting on Money, 132 
Sprains, Charms for, 161 
Staff, Divination by, 146 
Standing in another's Shoes, 91 

on end, of Hair, 73 

Stillborn Children, Graves of, 15 
Stocklnss, Superstitions about, 85 * 
Stolen Kisses and Gloves, 93 
stopping House Clock at Death, 117 
Stumbling Up-stairs, 123 

on Threshold, 124 

at Grave, 124 

Sty, Prevention and Cure of, 162 
Sudden whitening of Hair, 73 
Sunday good Day to marry, 38 

Lucky for Birth, 2 

Superstitions about Marriage, 42 

, value of, 1. 

, in what interesting, 1 

, whence sprung, 1 

Sussex Superstition about Children 

born on Sunday. 2 
Sweeping, Sui-ersiiti-'US about, 126 
Symbolism of Shoes, 88 

Table Superstitions, lOO 
Tea-leaves, Divination by, 109 •' 
Tea-stalks, Divination by, 147 
Teeth, Superstitions respecting, 72^ 
Thirteen at Table, 101, 102 * 
Three Magpies sign of a Wedding, 32 
Thrush, Charm against, 163 
Toothache, Charms against, 163 
Touching Corpse among P<)t>r, 60 
Turning Back after starting, 132 
Turquoise in Ring, 96 
Typhus Fever, Remedies for, 165 



*' UNCHRISTKXED GROtTND," 14 

'* Universal Fortune-teller," 2 
Unmarried Person between Man and 
Wife, 111 

Venetian Glass. Breaking of, by 

POISONED Draught, 116 
Virgin Mary at Birth of John the 

Baptist, 8 

Warts. Charms against, 165, 166 
Watching dead Body, 61 ' 
Water used at Baptism, 20 
Weakly Infants, how ti'eated in Corn- 
wall, 12 
Wearing Looking-classes, 115 
Weather, Charms to influence, 23 
Weather-lore from Fires, 129 
Wedding-cake, 44 ♦ 
Wedding-ring, Divination by, 45 * 

placed in Wedding-cake, 45 > 

hired in Ireland, 47 , 

, Notions about, 47 » 

Wens, Cures for, 167 
Whistling Woman, 125 
White Gloves and Death of the Un- 
married, 94 
Whitsuntide, new Clothes on, 82 
Whooping-cough, Cures for, 167 
Will-o'-th'-Wisp, Omen of Death. 53 ♦ 
William I. at Hastings. 83 
Wine, &c., drank at Funerals, 64 
" Wise Woman," 121 
" Wishing-bone " of Fowl, 109 
V/itch taking form of Cat, 14 
Witchcraft, Divination in, 138 

Precautions against, 169 

Worthing, case of Doer howWng at, 49 
" Wrong Side of Church," 62 

Yellow Hair and Beard, 75 
Yew, at Christmas. 53 
Younir, Lieutenant, Announcement of 
Brother's Death to, 56 

Zadkiel's Almanack, 142 



CASSELL, PETTER, QALPIN & CO., BELLE SAUVAGE WOBKS, L0ND02J, E.C. 



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